It was automatic for Ziva to assess her surroundings when she entered a room, and the hospital lobby was no different. It had the disadvantage of being large; there were many square meters to scan for danger, with many people who could be an enemy soldier. On the other hand, the advantages of this lobby included few places to hide. Ziva had been trained to look at such spots as behind a slender tree placed in a corner for decoration, or sitting on a chair facing away from a potential source of identification. Ziva herself had used such techniques with reasonable success.
There was a tree with browning leaves next to the elevator. A real tree, then, dying from lack of light. It would likely be soon replaced by someone whose job it was to try to fool people into thinking that a hospital was a pleasant place to spend time. There was a woman with a tall and gangly son towering over her behind the tree; no threat, at least not here in this country. The pair were likely visiting the father. Ziva dismissed them from her thoughts almost immediately. Likewise she could ignore the three tremendously obese women sitting—and crushing—the bench in the middle of the lobby. The trio had obtained bars of candy and were busy consuming the treats in defiance of the polite sign posted nearby requesting that visitors refrain from eating in the lobby, complaining that modern medicine had not yet come up with a satisfactory method for curing coronary artery disease. The three were no threat to her. Any movement faster than a waddle would be out of the question.
Ziva spotted Napoleon Solo toward one side of the lobby, and joined him. "Where?"
Solo gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Over there. Four of them, all watching Illya read the paper."
Yes. Solo was absolutely correct. Each of the four looked the part of a THRUSH henchman: fit and ready to fight for Graybelle's misbegotten cause of taking over the world. Ziva felt a mild distaste; when had she fallen into Tony's habit of thinking in bad movie clichés?
Perhaps it was when UNCLE had come to town, seeking to prevent the world from being taken over by madmen. Another cliché sprang to her mind: just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.
Ziva could contemplate the mysteries of the universe at a later time. Right now, doing something about the four in the lobby eying the retired UNCLE agent was of greater importance.
Solo read her mind. "The corridor off to the left appears to be little used," he offered. "I'm a little less tolerant of collateral damage these days than I used to be. Plus, people tend to take pictures. The downfall of cell phones, you know."
Ziva did know. The average citizen would be more than happy to whip out his or her cell phone and snap off a picture or two in hopes of selling it for a great deal of money to some entertainment station masquerading as news. It was something that the UNCLE agents hadn't needed to guard against in their heyday.
Kuryakin was likewise waiting for Ziva's arrival. Though he gave no evidence of noticing her, he nonetheless ruffled his magazine back into its original configuration, tucked it under his arm, and stood up. He carefully looked at his watch, giving the impression that his appointment time had arrived. With a casual glance around the lobby, just as any visitor might do, he ambled off in the direction of the corridor that Solo had pointed out to Ziva.
The four THRUSH minions were equally as casual, but far more modern. Instead of looking at their respective watches, two of the four pulled out their cell phones in order to 'check the time'. It was a bit awkward; only one of them was supposed to have performed the maneuver and 'notified' the others that their appointment was nigh. Clearly they'd forgotten who had been assigned the task.
Wait; their quarry was getting away! The four ceased to squabble over the cell phone mishap and moved 'casually' toward the left corridor in pursuit of Kuryakin.
Solo sniffed. "They're just not making 'em like they used to. Back in the old days, henchmen would come out of the woodwork." He brushed some nonexistent lint off of his sleeve. "Come along, my dear. We have some minions to apprehend."
For a corridor with minimal use, the seven people entering the space managed the feat with only minimal notice by the security guards and hospital guests in the lobby. There were offices up and down the corridor with heads bent over desks and computers, oblivious to the parade of agents. Every few feet there was another bulletin board with a barrage of notices letting the employees know that they had civil rights and an invitation to set up a bowling league. Ziva ignored the copious pages regarding privacy. For her, privacy meant not giving up the information in the first place. What was so hard about that concept?
Kuryakin reached the end of the corridor. He paused, as if collecting his thoughts, then pushed through the heavy metal door to the stairwell, disappearing from view.
The four henchmen, deprived of the sight of their victim, hustled to the doorway. The first shoved at the door, eager to pursue.
The door wouldn't budge.
He shoved again, harder.
Stuck.
The henchman put his shoulder into it—the UNCLE agent was getting away!
The door flew open, far more easily than it should have. The henchman stumbled, and fell. The door jerked forward, banging the henchman's head in its path. The henchman flopped over, out cold.
The second henchman was better prepared than the first, and now expecting trouble. He leaped through the doorway, holding the door back with one meaty fist, the other cocked to punch out someone's lights. It didn't matter that his opponent was old enough to be his grandfather. Kuryakin was the enemy target.
The henchman never got the chance. Kuryakin, equally prepared, assisted the man's forward momentum. He assisted the man's forward momentum right into the steel handrail of the ascending concrete staircase beyond. The man's forehead connected first with the handrail and then with the second concrete step from the bottom of the stairs.
Henchman number two: also out cold.
For Ziva, this was worrisome. If she didn't hurry, she wouldn't get any opportunity at all to take out her displeasure on a deserving henchman. There were only two left.
She slipped up silently behind one of the remaining henchmen and tapped him firmly on both carotids. The man jerked, and slipped to the floor. Ziva allowed herself a small and satisfied smile; she hadn't lost her touch. She was good at it.
She turned to the last henchman, only to find that Mr. Solo had done something equally as elegant to render the man harmless.
Solo adjusted his coat sleeves and cleared his throat. He surveyed the four henchmen at their feet, Kuryakin who had stepped out from behind the door, and Ziva. He winced. "Do you suppose we could persuade your NCIS folks to cart these minions away? Knocking them out was easy. Dragging their bodies to a secure holding cell seems like a lot of effort these days."
"Do have a nice cuppa, my dear," Mrs. Mallard cooed, holding the tea cup to McGee's lips.
Not that he was in any condition to object. No, McGee was going to remain sitting on this brocade sofa in the parlor where DiNozzo and that seaman Van Olnicker had dumped him, and he wasn't going to try to get up for at least the next five years. Holding his head up and his eyes open were about the best that he could do for himself at the moment, and even that was in question.
No, McGee didn't want any tea. He wanted drugs, and the more the better. The spot where they'd dug the shrapnel out of his back was throbbing and sore. Sore? Hah! Pounding, aching, stabbing…he could come with another half dozen adjectives to describe what he was feeling without half trying.
That didn't matter to Mrs. Mallard. "Another sip, that's a good boy," she crooned. "Mother will fix it, make you feel all nice and cozy inside."
Tea would make him throw up. "Mrs. Mallard—"
"Another sip," she insisted, pouring it down McGee's throat.
Cough. Splutter. Unswallowed tea cascading onto DiNozzo's borrowed tee shirt, retrieved from the trunk of DiNozzo's car so that McGee could sit in the front seat without the seat fabric requiring heavy duty cleaning afterward. McGee's own shirt was covered with congealed blood and currently sitting inside a protective plastic bag. Serves you right, Tony, for dumping me here. Aren't you finished searching the house yet?
Something warm, solid, and alive leaned against his leg. Agony stabbed through him; that was where he had another hole in him, courtesy of flying quartz shrapnel. McGee couldn't help it; he let out an agonized hiss.
Mrs. Mallard beamed. "That's a good boy, Tyson," she told the Welsh Corgi at McGee's feet, the dog with the snarling lip.
You know exactly what you're doing, don't you, Tyson? You know exactly where to dump your furry little feet to cause me the most—
Tyson shifted.
McGee bit his lip, trying to keep the inappropriate language inside and not shrieking out to scandalize Ducky's mother. His stomach roiled threateningly.
"More tea?"
"Tony!" It came out as a cry. A croak. A whimper. An I'll do anything you ask, only get me out of here plea.
"Oh, dear." It wasn't Mrs. Mallard. This time it was Seaman Ryan Van Olnicker, peering out through the chintz curtains as he passed by the window, drawing attention to himself with a tray of scones in his hands. "Are those men supposed to be running across that lawn?"
"What?" McGee hadn't realized that the young seaman had returned to the parlor, but those words banished the remnants of the comforting cobwebs in his brain. Clarity sprung forth with an unwelcome gush of adrenaline. "What men?"
Van Olnicker pointed through the window, juggling the tray and completely forgetting that in order to see what the seaman was pointing at McGee would have to rise from the sofa. Not only that, but McGee would next disturb the beast at his feet, push aside the old lady with the hot tea cup, traverse the distance between the sofa and the window, and then persuade his drugged eyes to focus on whatever it was that Van Olnicker had discovered. It was a complex task.
No matter. McGee was an NCIS agent, devoted to the cause of Justice, Truth, and The American Way. More to the point, it sounded as though he was about to be plunged yet again in a fight for his life.
Crap.
McGee took a deep breath, and hoisted himself into an upright position.
His brain responded by allowing every corpuscle of blood to drain out of his head. Vision vanished. Butterflies buzzed in his ears, despite the fact that butterflies generally tended to be more silent than anything. McGee clutched the back of the sofa in order to keep from falling.
Deep breath. Deep breath. You can do this. Knees, keep me standing. We can sit back down later, once we see that Van Olnicker has mistaken the pool boy for a gaggle of THRUSH henchmen. McGee used his other hand to grab onto the wing-backed chair to provide additional leverage on his journey to the window. Hand over hand he progressed, first hanging onto the piano, then a decorative table, but bypassing the antique rocker that looked as though it would fall apart if someone breathed too heavily in its vicinity. At the moment, McGee was breathing very heavily.
Nothing else available: he grabbed onto Van Olnicker's shoulder as the sturdiest of objects to maintain a horizontal position. "Where are they?" McGee's other hand pushed open the curtains, doing double duty by holding the fabric out of the way against the wall and—oh, by the way—using the wall for additional support.
Even through the drugs, McGee could see them. Van Olnicker hadn't been mistaking anything. It was hard to tell how many—double vision? Quadruple?—but even if he divided the quantity by four, the NCIS agents inside were substantially outnumbered.
This was so not good.
The leader of the henchmen, was that—? Crap, yes, it was. Distance didn't matter; McGee could identify that sharp voice anywhere. He'd be hearing it in his nightmares for the next decade or so.
"You idiots! This is the wrong house! Mallard's place is on the other side of the road!"
Nice to know that THRUSH had the same personnel issues that McGee himself faced. McGee would pit his clerical help against Graybelle's henchmen any day. It would be a toss up as to who had fewer addled brain cells.
Unfortunately, that was in the smarts department. Bricker—excuse me, Bambi—wore heels that lifted her bosom into the vicinity of the top of the Washington Monument. Dietrich my mom named me after Marlena Schmidt wielded an eye liner pen like a weapon. And Ryan Van Olnicker, right there in the room with McGee, was still wearing Mrs. Mallard's frilly pink apron and a charming smudge of flour on his nose that he'd evidently decided not to wash off for a while.
Which really didn't matter, because—except for Van Olnicker—McGee's crowd of keyboard kops weren't here. They were probably back at Headquarters, McGee realized, doing their nails. Again. That was what McGee had caught them doing whenever he had left them unsupervised for more than five minutes.
No, why it really didn't matter was because in about thirty seconds, McGee was about to be dead. So were Van Olnicker, Mrs. Mallard, and Tony DiNozzo. The dogs would likely scurry away to live to snarl at someone else. Clearly the canines were the smartest ones around.
"Ooooh!" squealed Van Olnicker. "Is that the enemy?" He darted from the window, fleeing.
Which ripped away one of the supports that McGee was counting on, and he sagged, pain searing through his back. He landed on his knees, clutching the window sill, trying to get back up. What the hell, I may as well stay right here on the floor. I need the wall for cover, as long as I can see out through the window.
He started to call for DiNozzo, and thought better of it. McGee doubted that his voice would reach to the next floor up, and the first shot fired would do an even better job of notifying his partner that the Mallard residence was about to be invaded. Of course, the first bullet might go straight through McGee's own heart, and he wished as he'd never wished before that his own trusty handgun was in his hand. Abby must have it as part of the crime scene where they found Ducky and me.
Mrs. Mallard, from across the room, trilled, "would you like a scone, Timothy? They're ever so good."
Somewhat desperately, McGee said, "Mrs. Mallard, please get down behind the sofa! They're going to be shooting at us!"
"No, I don't think I'm going to permit that in the house, Timothy," Mrs. Mallard replied sternly. "Manners, you know."
"Mrs. Mallard—"
Van Olnicker reappeared from the kitchen, two rifles in his hands and boxes of ammo stuffed into the pockets of the frilly pink apron. He extended one of the rifles to McGee. "Do you think we'll need these?"
Are you kidding? McGee picked his jaw up off of the carpet and accepted the weapon. "Where did you get these?"
"We're supposed to be prepared," Van Olnicker admonished his superior. "You sent me out on a mission to protect Mrs. Mallard, so I brought weapons."
"I told you to protect Mrs. Mallard from herself," McGee started to say, then gave it up as a bad job. Bottom line: McGee had a weapon and ammo to go with it.
He hefted the gun and stared at it. The lacquer on the barrel had an oddly pink finish to it. "This isn't military issue."
"Of course not!" Van Olnicker was scandalized. "Those nasty, filthy things? Mother bought these for me, as a graduation gift after Basic Training. See the lovely etching on the scope? Mother had that done especially for me."
McGee devoutly hoped that the weapon wouldn't blow up in his face. Then again, considering the odds, maybe that wouldn't be the worst way to go.
Van Olnicker pushed open the window. His own rifle gleamed lavender in the sunlight. "They're coming over the lawn. Oh, look out for that petunia garden!"
"My petunias?" Mrs. Mallard picked up her head. "They're trampling my petunias?"
Bang! The THRUSH henchmen kicked in the door.
"Tyson! Contessa!" Mrs. Mallard snapped.
Two Welsh Corgis jumped to attention. Two more dogs raced from the kitchen to join the pack, stolen scones disappearing down their throats as they ran on short stubby legs.
"They've stomped on my petunias!" Mrs. Mallard told the canine pack.
McGee could hear Dr. Mallard's lecture in his head. The Welsh Corgi, Timothy, is a noble creature. Most people, seeing their diminutive size, think of them as a lap dog. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Welsh Corgi was bred to be a herd dog, for the control of herds of cows, and they are quite talented at it. They are devoted family pets and rather good at protecting any children in the household.
There were no children present, but McGee supposed that Mrs. Mallard, her mind in tatters, would qualify. The dogs leaped forward, snarling.
Four Welsh Corgis, all intent on the same intruder, brought down the THRUSH henchman with the same finality as a three hundred pound linebacker.
The henchman cried out and, falling under the furry onslaught, accidentally fired his gun. The bullet ricocheted off the doorframe and back toward the next henchman.
The second henchman behind him, convinced that he'd been fired on, discharged his own weapon into the interior of the entranceway, neatly taking out one of the light bulbs on the chandelier.
That gave the two NCIS agents cause to return fire.
"NCIS! Drop your weapons!" McGee yelled, hoping that someone could hear it and doubting that the sound emerged as anything more than a croak. Even if it did, all the THRUSH henchmen would do was laugh, right after they took away his pink rifle.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
It only took one bang to notify DiNozzo that his partner, the seaman, and Ducky's mother were in trouble. In a flash, DiNozzo's own handgun was out and he was running toward the staircase that led to the parlor.
Maybe it's a blessing that I haven't yet found the emerald. It would be embarrassing to find it, only to have THRUSH take it from me.
DiNozzo skidded to a stop at the top of the stairs.
There were four Welsh Corgis in front of the main entrance, growling and chewing up a THRUSH henchman and eying the next one in line hungrily.
There was Seaman Van Olnicker, with a rifle in his hands gleaming purple—purple? Purple?—firing at something or someone outside. "Ewww. I think I hit another one. Ewwww."
There was McGee, collapsed by the wall, sticking a pink rifle out through the broken glass. Gonna be a story there, McGee, if we live long enough to tell it.
Worst of all, DiNozzo could see another two dozen or more THRUSH minions running across the road from the estate located there, all headed for Ducky's home, led by Commander Graybelle.
Oh, crap.