Here's the next chapter, folks. I hope it doesn't disappoint. Admission of guilt: I've never been in Baltimore, and know virtually nothing about the city. Anyone who lives there or knows the area, I beg you to overlook the hijacking and alterations of city features for the sake of the story. Additionally, courtesy of RL being fickled today, I was unable to copyedit this chapter as well as I'd like, so any typos or odd grammatical structures are its fault.
Disclaimer: Don't own NCIS, just borrowing the characters for a little fun.
Chapter 10
Pivoting, Gibbs left the lab, taking the stairs back up to the conference room. Entering, a little breathless, he asked Hadar, "Director David – blackmail files. You know anything about them?"
Hadar rose, looking surprised, "How did you fin…" He broke off, then pulling himself together, he said, "No idea where he keeps it. Do you know….have you found it?"
"No." Gibbs turned to Vance, "Eli David has electronic blackmail files somewhere. It's how he keeps people in line. If we can find them…"
Vance stood straighter, "What do you need?"
"McGee and Abby are working on it. Whatever he needs…"
Vance nodded, "I'll have cybercrimes take over whatever else he's been doing."
Pointing to two new people present, Vance motioned him to sit. "Gibbs, these are the heads of the protection teams for DiNozzo. Since he's been taken, they'll be working with you on finding him as quickly as possible, now."
A plainclothed woman, diminutive, short gray hair, lean, nodded to Gibbs, "Senior Agent Kel McGuire." The wiry, dark haired, tall man in dark BDUs nodded to Gibb, "Commander Richard Bodin."
Vance continued, "Fornell and I filled them in on the last few days."
McGuire nodded and passed a few printouts to Gibbs, "Customs has passed on lists of people who match the criteria we're interested in who've enter the country in the last week. We're checking them as quickly as we can. Officer Hadar has identified several as Mossad or Kidon, but there's still a fair number to go through." She added, "We have a couple of excellent computer specialists we can assign to work with Special Agent McGee. They're good at snooping and tracking in cyberspace without getting caught."
Vance glanced at Gibbs, who nodded after a slight pause. "Thank you, Commander."
Fornell added, "We should have the list processed by morning, Gibbs."
Gibbs glanced over the list, while asking, "The list of safe houses, Hadar?"
The Israeli nodded, "Plus a few more we know of that belong to other countries." He passed a couple of sheets of paper to Gibbs, his neat handwriting covering both front and back. "Many of them are alarmed and booby-trapped."
Gibbs scanned the lists before handing them to McGuire. "Split into teams – three or four. One NCIS agent with each team; your people also Commander to provide support. Divide and assign houses to each team to clear. Hadar, you have 30 minutes to brief everyone on what they should know to clear each house safely. Move people, the clock is ticking."
As McGuire, Bodin, and Hadar discussed assignments, Fornell moved quietly over to Gibbs and Vance. "If McGee manages to get that information, we're going to have to make sure it's destroyed. If it's known we have it, we might as well paint a big bulls-eye on the USA. Everyone and their grandmother will be trying to get their hands on it."
Vance nodded. "Uh huh," he said in understated agreement.
When it became obvious that Vance wouldn't say anything further, Fornell offered, "I can bring in more agents to help with the search."
Gibbs said quietly, "No. I don't think this should be a large scale hunt. If these Kidon get wind of several of their safe-houses being raided, they might decide to kill DiNozzo and cut their losses. Besides," he said, "you still have to interrogate Ziva."
With a shrug, Fornell replied, "More important things to do right now. She'll keep."
Handing the list of addresses with some highlighted to Gibbs, Hadar said, "I'd appreciate the opportunity to accompany you. I can help disarm the traps and alarms."
Gibbs looked inquiringly at Vance, and the director nodded his approval.
Vance said, "I'll update SecNav. Keep me posted."
As the conference room emptied, Vance felt a pang of regret at not going with them. "It sucks being in charge at times," he said softly.
-000-
Groaning, Tony slowly opened his eyes. He was laying on a shabby, lumpy bed in a strange room, dressed in the street clothes he'd worn to the hospital, smelling the sour mix of cigarette smoke, unwashed bodies, and booze in the air. It was dark outdoors, and a light outside a grimy window flashed on and off in a loud yellow color. He could hear an occasional car horn and slow moving traffic on the street outside. For a moment he was disoriented, his mind sliding back into his days at Baltimore PD when he was undercover in one of the seedier districts of the city. Where was he?
"You're awake finally."
Twisting around slightly, he found a man slumped in a nondescript arm chair next to his bed. Frowning, Tony struggled to remember where he'd seen him before. Another man came out of the bathroom and into the light of the lone lamp in the room. Malachi. Which made the other man…. They were the orderlies who'd come to take him for radiographs before the surgery on his shoulder. In a rough voice, he muttered, "Ok, I'll bite. Where are we and what did you do with the hospital?"
With a soft snort, Malachi spoke, his English now hinting of an Israeli accent, "Baltimore."
As he tried to move enough to relieve some of the pressure on his bad shoulder, he said, "Gonna introduce your mate here, Mal?"
"Special Agent DiNozzo, meet Benjamin Solah."
"I take it, Ben, that you aren't really a hospital orderly."
Ben expression was far colder than Malachi's, eyeing him with distaste. "No. And if I had my way, you wouldn't have left there alive."
Raising his eyebrows, Tony said brightly, "Oh well, in that case I'll be going now. Nice meeting you, Ben." Struggling to rise, Tony realized he'd been handcuffed to the metal bed frame. "Well, ain't this a nice mess you've gotten us into, Ben. Ben Solah. Ben-Sol? Hey, that makes sense, Ben-Sol. Sorta like Pine-Sol. Cleaner. You're a "cleaner", right? Mossad trained rubbish mover. Ok, glad we got that straight."
Sobol sneered, "Garbage, that's what you are."
Sinking back to the bed, Tony tried to draw a deep breath, but only started coughing, which hurt like hell. Malachi twisted the cap off a bottle of water and handed it to Tony. As he got his coughing under control, he asked, "So, what's happening? You gonna share your plans with me or do you wanna play 'What Comes Next in 20 Questions Or Less'?"
He could see Malachi half smiling, but was positive that no matter how much Malachi might be amused, it wouldn't stop him from delivering Tony into Eli David's hands. Ben stood and moved to the door, "Going for food." He exited with a final glare at Tony.
Out of energy, Tony sagged back, and concentrated on studying the room. It was an old hotel room, the dirty paint peeling in large flakes near the ceiling, an old radiator under the window banging and knocking from the steam passing through. Tired curtain hung in the one window, cobwebs above it. Two old brassy wall sconces with dim bulbs provided what light there was in the room. The bed he laid on was lumpy, and the bedspread was as dingy and colorless as the curtains. A bed-side lamp leaned sideways, no bulb in the socket. A patched and worn carpet in a stained brown covered the floor. A door stood partially open to the bathroom, and he knew it would be as dated and worn as the room.
It was so familiar to him. He'd covered so many homicide investigations in similar hotel rooms during his time on the Baltimore force that it was almost as familiar as home to him. Closing his eyes briefly, he went through the various neighborhoods of the city comparing them to what he could hear outside of the traffic, and thought he must be in the Fells Point District. Lots of old hotels, center of the Mafia activities back in the day when they were at the height of their influence. Speakeasies. Old hotels….Tony slipped back into an uneasy sleep.
-000-
The time he'd spent with the two Israelis had been strained. Solah especially had been hostile and angry, furious that Tony had killed another Mossad agent. It didn't seem to matter the cause behind the killing, he wanted to take Tony out right then and there. Ben-Gidon was more perfunctory in his duties. Tony didn't know if he didn't consider him a serious escape risk, or maybe thought the whole exercise was boring, or maybe he just didn't care.
The time the three men had spent together had been filled with silence on the Israelis part, words only exchanged when necessary. Didn't stop Tony from doing his best to goad them, and he spent his waking time talking endlessly about movies. Solah took to leaving the room on the least excuse to escape Tony's commentary. Malachi ignored him for the most part. The only information Tony could get out of him was that they were waiting for word that the expected transportation was ready.
As the hours passed, several men slipped into the room solitarily, speaking quietly to Ben-Gidon for a minute, before slipping back out. While most of the conversations were in Hebrew, enough were in English for Tony to pick up news on the heavy dragnet that had been cast over the airports, waterways, bus and train terminals, taxi dispatch, and any other mass transit modes, making it impossible for the Israelis to move him out of the country yet. Inwardly, Tony smirked – go team USA!
When he wasn't trying to annoy his captors, Tony thought about escape. As the hours passed, his ideas swung from almost plausible to the wildly absurd. Every knock on the door got his heart rate up as he imagined Gibbs and the team on the other side, ready to burst in…well, maybe Gibbs and McGee. He wasn't sure what was going on with Ziva, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. If it wasn't Gibbs, then it was The Green Hulk, or a platoon of Marines, or a sweet ol' granny armed with chicken soup laced with tranquilizers to put his captors to sleep.
He woke out of a snooze once dreaming of the Godfathers and Mafia and longshoremen going after his captors for using the docks to slip away in the night by boat without paying protection money. Tony snorted to himself, remembering conversations while on stakeouts of secret tunnels to the harbor going back to the Civil War used by the Underground Railway to help slaves escape from a slave auction site about a mile east of the harbor. Legend had it that the tunnels were enlarged and many of the older hotels had secret passages to these tunnels to help with moving shanghaied men to the waterfront. Rolling his eyes as he gingerly stretched, he imagined the tunnels with toll booths now to feed the city coffers.
While waiting for Batman and Robin to rescue him, he kept detailed notes in his head of the visitors to the hotel room, studying them for any information he could glean on their numbers and identifying features. And dreaming of escape.
-000-
Two days later, he finally got his chance. He'd been able to look out the bathroom window when he was uncuffed to use the facilities and confirmed he was in the Fells Point District. He was pretty sure he even knew which hotel he was in.
He gingerly rolled his good shoulder, trying to loosen it up, the other shoulder dully aching still. He'd love to have had some aspirin, but apart from rebinding it to his side after a quick shower last night, his captors hadn't offered anything in the way of medical care. He'd just have to be careful not to bang it up any.
Ben-Sol had taken off a few minutes ago, headed out to pick up dinner take-out. Malachi had been in the shower when Ben-Sol had left, counting on the handcuffs to keep Tony secure.
Tony heard the shower stop, and knew he didn't have much time. He tugged his buckle open and slipped his belt knife out. Flipping it so he could fit the point of the hardened blade into the lock, he twisted and pried at it until he felt it snap. Shaking his wrist free, he eased off the bed and moved silently to the bathroom door. Poised beside the door, pressed back against the wall, he waited, knowing he'd have only one shot at this. He held his breath.
As soon as the door started moving, he stepped into the doorway and slammed his weight into the door as hard as he could. As it struck Malachi, who had been pulling a shirt on over his head, Tony stepped sideways and drove his knife upward aiming for Malachi's gut as the man staggered, hoping the man had been stunned enough to slow down that one second he'd need to strike before the man recovered.
He managed to connect with Malachi's body before the man could free up his hands from the shirt that was still half-on. Tony knew he'd scored a deep slice into the other's body, but not if it were enough to stop him. Slipping back, shielding his bad side with the door jam, he flipped the knife so he was holding the bloody blade. As his adversary flung the door open wide no longer hindered by the shirt, he stepped back, and threw the knife hard, not at Malachi's body, but down solidly into his bare foot.
With a muffled scream of pain, Malachi stumbled and went to his knees. Tony stepped back out of the other's range. He cursed as the Malachi pulled a handgun from its holster in the small of his back. Reaching out, Tony grabbed the bedside lamp and brought it down on Ben-Gidon's head. The Israeli raised an arm to block the blow, which distracted him just long enough for Tony to brace himself and raise his foot to drive the heel of his shoe into the side of Malachi's head, sending him falling backwards.
Without waiting, he ran to the door, heart racing, breath hitching painfully as he struggling to draw in air around his broken ribs. Yanking the door open, he pulled it closed behind him, then glanced up and down the hallway, trying to determine in which direction the stairs might be located.
A cleaning cart stood several yards down the hallway. He spotted a can of spray cleaner and ran to grab it before sprinting back to the doorway. Just as the door was pulled opened Malachi stumbled out, limping badly, one hand pressed to his temple and squinting in pain. Tony pressed the nozzle button and blasted him in the face with cleaning solution. Screaming in pain, blinded, Malachi reached up to his face, but at the last second, he struck out with his gun hand striking Tony on his bad shoulder. Gasping, going white faced from the pain, Tony reeled back.
Malachi aimed his gun in the last direction he knew Tony had been in, and fired. The shot went high, but was still close enough to alarm Tony. If anyone else was in the hallway, they would be in danger of being shot. He wouldn't let any innocent civilians be wounded or killed because of him. Forcing his body up, swaying from the pain, he reached out and slammed the heel of his good hand into Malachi's chin, sending the man reeling back into the hotel room.
Knowing he couldn't count on wrestling the gun from Malachi single-handedly, he abandoned that hope. Pulling the door shut, he moved towards what appeared to be elevators, hoping that he could find the stairs. He couldn't afford to meet Ben Solah, or any of the other Israelis returning. Just ahead, he heard the elevator chime, announcing its arrival. Damn, he thought. Bumping into the wall, he almost went past the doorway marked "Housekeeping". Desperate, he reached for the door knob, praying that it was unlocked. The elevator door opened just around the corner as he started to turn the knob….