Chapter 26
Gibbs was anxious as he watched the trade go down. His gut was churning and he found himself hoping it was the awful coffee he consumed earlier.
Fornell had met him in a hole in the wall diner. The coffee was worse than the atmosphere, which was saying a lot. The red vinyl seats were torn and tattered and the paint on the wall was peeling away with the wallpaper it had been slathered over top of.
Fortunately, this being their space, McGee had been able to rig up listening devices in the hangar, so that, at least, made their observation a little easier than it had been at the club.
"Wow," Abby piped up at one point, "Ziva really likes those guns." The amusement in her voice was a nice change of pace over the grumpy and mood woman he and McGee had been sharing this space with over the past few weeks.
Things seemed to be moving along smoothly, the money had been handed over, and the two they were planning to use to gain more leverage into the group had just pulled away. Guns were being shifted from one van to the other and they watched the final crate get loaded from white van to black.
"Stay alert, here we go." Gibbs said, though he knew the two were already locked on targets and waiting for any sign that this was going south.
Gibbs pulled out his phone and hit redial, Fornell answered on the first ring, "Go." Was all Gibbs said and it set Fornell's team and McGee in motion at the same time.
Gibbs watched as McGee relayed the information that the FBI was headed their direction to the group in the hangar. He felt his heart plummet as he watched a shaky boy raise his gun to point at Tony, knowing that one squeeze of that inexperienced boy's nervous finger could spell the end for his agents.
He heard Abby gasp and watched her freeze over the keyboard she was using to control the weapons. She was in charge of the non-lethal pepper spray bullets, but she didn't seem able to react as she watched the scene playing out in front of her eyes.
Gibbs cursed himself yet again for bringing her with on this, but then Tim reached over as if to swipe her keyboard and operate all the weapons simultaneously and she slapped his hand away.
xoxo
Ziva had been standing next to Tony as they made their final farewells to the group. She knew what was coming and couldn't help but wonder why they were positioned so directly in front of the open side door of the van where three young men waited with guns conveniently slung over their shoulders.
When one of the young boys raised his gun to point directly towards Tony's chest, she knew that from this distance of less than five feet the boy would certainly not miss. Her heart dropped into her stomach as she waited for their back up to engage, but nothing happened.
The boy's finger was twitching nervously, entirely too close to the trigger for her liking, but Tony seemed to take it all in stride. He pulled the driver directly into himself from their hands still joined from the handshake that never ended. Tony spun the driver and held him in a firm choke hold as a human shield.
The boy's finger lifted off the trigger as soon as he seemed to realize he would be killing one of their guys if he pulled it.
Just then, finally, a smattering of paintballs burst against his chest, sending him back further into the van with a small cloud of pepper spray and a look that combined confusion and pain contorting his features.
Ziva used the momentary distraction to disarm the three men in the van, quickly and violently. She started by kicking the side of the rolling door, slamming it into the legs of the man who had just been knocked inside and hearing a sickening crack just before the screaming started.
Not wasting any time on the surprise element they had built up, she took two quick steps and jumped, grabbing the cargo bar on the top of the van and swinging herself into the small compartment feet first. There was very little room for the three men after the guns had been loaded and she landed one of them square in the chest, knocking him fully against the other side of the van headfirst.
As she landed, she instantly pulled the gun from the third man's hands, wrenching it away easily and flinging it out the open side door. She disarmed the man on the ground and used the butt of his own weapon to knock him unconscious. The man she had kicked probably didn't need disarmed as he was out cold, but she threw his weapon outside anyway.
The last man standing was a boy, probably no older than seventeen. He was shaking with the fear of having watched this little woman sweep through like a tornado and efficiently take out his team.
As she climbed out of the van with the last man standing she saw the look of pure terror on the face of the driver.
"He's driving." Tony said to the driver as he gestured out the boy. "You're coming with us."
Ziva physically led the boy to the driver's side and placed him in. "If you make it out and we do not. Tell your boss that we have lots of friends who will be coming for him for this betrayal."
With that, she slammed the door and returned to find Tony had secured the driver with zip ties in the back of the van. "Two minutes, Boss." They heard McGee say and shared a smile that was quicker than they had thought it would be.
"Follow us!" he shouted to the boy in the other van who just nodded blankly.
"Damn it." He heard from the back of the van where Ziva was searching the driver's pockets. She was holding up a cell phone. "How stupid are you?" she asked the man who didn't seem able to say anything as she moved to the front, flung the phone out the window and put a clean bullet hole straight through the middle with her handgun.
The tires squealed as Tony peeled out, the black van following, but at a much slower rate of acceleration. The way he seemed to swerve in the rear view, he had either never driven before, or he was so completely scared out of his mind that he wasn't able to see straight.
Tony made a quick turn at the end of the long stretch of Hangars, taking them in the opposite direction from the service road and off to a back road they had scouted before ever deciding on this hangar for storage.
"Your boy back there is having a hard time keeping up. Don't you guys ever let him drive?" Tony asked the man who had been slamming around in the back of the van silently except a few grunts after his capture.
Apparently, the question was enough to get a rise out of him, "He's fifteen!" the man shouted at them as if they were the ones who were idiots for him bringing a kid with to a gun buy.
"Never bring a boy to do a lamb's job." Ziva responded and the angry cursing and yelling from their passenger in the back drowned out Tony's laughter, "Man." He corrected, "Never bring a boy to do a man's job."
Ziva turned to him and winked, "I know." She said with a smirk and they both felt the relief of having survived the situation, though there was much ahead of them.
They took another turn; the loud slam in the back was followed this time by a muffled groan and then silence.
Tony looked in his rear view mirror and could see the other van finally coming into view behind them around the last corner. He led the boy to the main highway, heading away from the airport in the opposite direction the FBI had approached from and then the boy was on his own as Tony floored it swerving around traffic and getting off the freeway around a blind curve.
Finally losing the boy, he glanced over to see Ziva Texting the van's direction to Gibbs, knowing he would have the FBI surrounding it in no time. Either they had sealed their fate with the Rodriguez cartel, completely blowing their cover, or this man in the back was going to prove useful in getting them back in the door.
xoxo
Gibbs breathed a sigh of relief as he intercepted the text and called Fornell back to get the teams moving in the right direction to get the guns back. Hopefully, they could catch the van in time.
McGee was following it on the traffic cameras and Gibbs put Fornell on speaker so McGee could relay the information. As far as anyone outside of Tobias Fornell knew, they had tracked one of the Rodriguez men's cell phones to the gun buy and had lucked into finding the van on traffic cameras after they left the scene.
The FBI had been given the general area to be in, but not a specific hangar, so their op would proceed without too much involvement unless they were able to get a warrant to search all the hangars in the lot or more details to narrow down their search.
The relayed instructions told them to blow right past the hangars, because the gang was on the move. The FBI was not able to keep up on the unfamiliar roads, but eventually had found their way to the highway. McGee now had screens changing to follow each traffic camera, keeping an eye on the black van, while Abby did the same on two of the screens, following the progress of the FBI vehicles.
The FBI vehicles were closing fast on the erratically swerving black van and would catch up in a matter of minutes. They didn't have that long, however, as they watched on screen, a patrol car pulled out from a blind spot, lights flashing as it barreled onto the highway in pursuit of the van.
As they watched and conveyed the information to Fornell, the van accelerated harder, weaving in and out of traffic precariously. There were several near misses. The van swerved to go around a black sedan, the cop in hot pursuit, lights and sirens warning those in front that they had better get out of the way. Some obliged, moving to the right, but the pursuit was moving at too fast a speed as they rounded a corner there was a slowdown from heavy traffic merging in from a downtown on ramp.
The corner was nearly blind and they watched the van's brake lights lock in just before the vehicle jerked violently to the left, smashing into the cement barricade and then swerving back across traffic. Everything happened so fast. Before the cop in pursuit could react, the van was sideways in front of them.
Brakes were not enough to stop the patrol car as it made contact with the side of the van. They watched in silence as the front of the cop car crumpled and seemed to transfer its forward motion to the van that began to tumble, rolling several times.
The damage caused the back doors to fly open, crates flying out and smashing on the road, revealing their cargo for the world to see. Abby cried out as she saw two men thrown from the rear of the van just before it came to a rest on its side.
It seemed that everything stopped around that one scene and Gibbs felt that familiar tightening in his gut. This was definitely going to make the news and now their little mission was going to become a public spectacle.
Gibbs groaned as he relayed the accident info and hung up on Fornell.
"I'm going to the safe house." He told the two, "We need to get what we can from the driver, so we can end this before it gets any more out of hand." There was no response as Tim and Abby continued to stare at the destruction on the screen in front of them.
xoxo
A/N: Sorry guys, but another fanfic plot line has cropped into my head and demanded attention while I was writing this. It is not related, so extremely so that it's not even for the same show.
I will be splitting my attention, but we're getting to all the action, so I should still be able to keep up with the updates. If I don't update on one of the five days I have been doing so lately, I'm sorry and I blame my other story.
I will continue to post on this 3-5 times a week, even if I have to force my other story to the back burner. It's not fair that it's trying to cut in line, anyway. ;)