Chapter 29

Tony wiped his hands against his jeans, wishing he could have a while longer to prepare for this. He wouldn't have minded another couple of months of hand-to-hand combat training with Ziva, though his one on one fighting had improved since they began dating. He almost laughed at that, as far as he could remember, aside from this mission, there had been very little 'dating' going on.

The darkness was concealing their position, at least for the moment and they waited patiently in the quiet that only ever exists in these late night hours.

He and Ziva shared a look that said everything; both knowing words now could get them stopped before anything went down. He couldn't help leaning into her for a brief kiss. They both knew the danger involved in what they were about to do and more than the hangar a few hours before, he was worried they wouldn't make it back out again.

He knew that there was no one he would prefer to have watching out for him in this kind of situation, however, there was also no one that he wanted further away from the potential danger. He reached a hand up to cup her cheek and let his thumb trail over the skin there as they shared a silent moment.

She pulled away from him suddenly, her eyes going hard and deadly serious and nodded at him a mere second before the power to the building was cut and she pulled on her night vision goggles. He followed suit and they rose up to peer over the stone wall around the perimeter of Eduardo Rodriguez's house.

They watched as several guards circling the perimeter dropped, one after another and heard the strangled cry from each. They knew Gibbs had a prime spot to clear the back of the house where there was sure to be less activity, but with the sudden darkness engulfing the sprawling mansion, they were sure to be met with anywhere from six to fifty men, depending on how quickly forces had been mobilized by the Rodriguez cartel.

Seeing a clearing in the guards on the back of the property, Ziva made a lithe move and was quickly over the chest high wall. He followed behind her, unable to stop a moment of pride in his recent fitness regimen and healthy eating thanks to the woman moving stealthy from one spot of cover to the next in front of him.

He watched her dart away from the cover of the well-groomed bush they had been behind. He was about to follow when he saw her duck behind a birdbath. There wasn't enough room in that spot for him, much less joining her. Instead, he scans the perimeter again, making sure no one is sneaking around to pull up behind them as she darts to a tree and he follows.

There is only room for one behind the tree so he steps behind her, pressing his weight into her back as she glances around one side of the tree and he does around the other. The contact is fleeting, but the comfort and reassurance bolsters his confidence as they move again.

"Clear." He says on a whisper of a breath and they are moving again.

Eyes scanning the yard for movement as they approach and finally are flush against the rough brick exterior of their target house. This was it.

He followed Ziva, trusting her photographic memory to recall where the most vulnerable spots of the house were from McGee's run down on the blue prints. He felt like he was making a racket, but knew Ziva would have ditched him long ago if she thought he would compromise this mission or put either one of them in dangerous, so it must be his heightened senses that were interpreting each step he took as loud as a gong.

She started to scale the wall, the bricks providing just enough leeway to grab hold with her fingertips and pull herself up. He watched her silently ascend the side of this mansion, and then crouched down to turn his attention back to scanning for activity.

He saw movement along the side of the house and he held still, hoping not to draw attention to himself as he waited a few more paces for the man to be fully behind the house and watched him drop to the ground with a low groan.

Even with tranquilizer darts, Tony did not want to be on the other end of a sniper rifle from his boss. After another thirty seconds he felt the shift in the air as a rope was dropped down to him. He ascended the building, following Ziva's track, using the rope in place of the tiny brink finger holds that never would have sustained his larger frame and hands on a climb, even if it were only up two stories. She was waiting silently on the balcony when he finally huffed himself over the edge.

They remained there, aside the glass double doors for several moments and Tony was sure it was because Ziva knew he needed to catch his breath after that climb. When his breathing evened out, she scanned the room intently before moving in front of the door.

It took a matter of seconds before she had silently picked the lock and they moved into the vacant room. Slowly and carefully, they made their way through the house, subtle noises were drifting through the open door of this bedroom, but they sounded distant. Tony was not willing to gamble that they were alone up here and he knew she wasn't either as she crouched near the floor to peer around the door frame up one direction and back down the other.

She stood and they moved together, out of the room, silently making their way through each room from that one to the stairs. After they had cleared the top floor, finding no resistance, they cautiously made their way down the stairs, knowing that this was the weakest point of their entry.

The stairwell was open and exposed from the long wide hall at the bottom. Anyone keeping watch on the second floor could easily spot them. Ziva stopped just before the opening in the railing where their feet would become visible and did some kind of maneuver that made him tilt his head to the side and wonder exactly why he hadn't been putting her full flexibility to the test.

Her left hand grabbing the railing, her right holding her weapon close to her body she crouched and bent nearly in half so that her head was between her feet and slowly lowered it further until she was nearly resting her head on the next stair down. He watched her look across the expanse of hallway for a long moment, allowing her night vision goggles to take in the entire situation before she moved more than her neck.

He began to wonder if she would pass out from having all the blood rush to her head, but she quickly and quietly rose to her feet and started down the stairs. They swept the second floor, putting a tranquilizer in a man sleeping in one of the rooms. After checking him to confirm he wasn't the man they were after, they moved through the rest of the floor, finding nothing.

They knew the men hadn't left. There was a surprise waiting for them out the front that would have been loud enough to alert Tony and Ziva to their attempt to flee and Gibbs and his tranquilizers would have quickly and quietly dispatched anyone sent out back.

Flipping their night vision goggles up off their eyes they shared a look in the nearly pitch black.

As they approached the staircase that would bring them to the main floor where anyone still in the house was sure to be gathered, Tony pulled a laser pointer out of his vest pocket and flashed it out the small window just to the side of the stairwell.

As he turned back, he recognized the look in her eyes and felt his heart skip a beat. He didn't want to see that look on her face, didn't want her to actually be telling him that she was leaving him behind, didn't want to think about the fact that she either didn't trust him to watch her back or didn't expect him to be able to pull his own on this. He shook his head at her, not willing to stay here while she walked in to a danger they hadn't fully assessed.

She leaned in to him, placing her lips directly against his ear as she spoke on a soft whisper so the sound wouldn't travel, "I need to get the charges in place, and I'm going to need you to back me up if anything goes wrong. We have to split up."

Her tone was level, but he knew her so well. There was nothing in her tone that should have worried him, but he still felt goose bumps rise on his flesh as she moved away from him. Cautiously, silently, she proceeded down the stairs and he felt a sudden desire to keep her in his sights for as long as possible, concern weighing heavy when he could no longer see her.

xoxo

Abby was absently chewing on her thumbnail. She hated waiting. She really hated waiting when she didn't have anyone to talk to, didn't even have the comfort of the familiar sounds of her lab back home. She hoped that whoever was processing evidence back home was treating all her babies properly.

She stopped as she realized she had been pacing and pulled up the cell phone trace on Gibbs and McGee again. They hadn't moved, Gibbs in the back, McGee in the front.

She knew as soon as their phones moved, all hell was finally breaking loose and she let out her frustrated sigh. Being cooped up in this place had been awful, and thinking it was going to, hopefully, be over soon had bolstered her mood. Sitting here, waiting for the raid on Rodriguez's mansion, however, was driving her up the wall.

She couldn't see anything other than the blinking lights from their cell phone GPS signals, and she was starting to fall apart a little.

Abby wished there was some part of this plan written for her, something she could do or data she could analyze. She eyed her Caf-Pow! lying across the desk from her and wrinkled her nose at it. She knew she was in a terrible place when not even the thought of her favorite drink could bring a modicum of cheer to her night.

She could blame it on being tired, she could blame it on the stress, the wasted energy, the fact that after all their preparations and all their set up that they hadn't even needed her for part of their cover and she could have stayed home, but it was none of those things. Abby was worried about her friends walking into a firefight carrying nothing more than drugs in their guns.

She was worried about Gibbs, resorting to his sniper tactics and what he would go through if he were up in a tree while something, anything, happened to a member of his team. If he was not fast enough to get to them, if he felt he didn't provide adequate coverage. She had seen his tough countenance crack on a couple of occasions, and they were peripherally related to protecting someone. If it had actually been his soul mission to protect Kate or Jenny Sheppard, the fall out would have been far more severe, she knew that.

She was worried about Tony and Ziva who were walking right into the lion's den. They were both supremely capable, but it only took a second, a single slip up or someone being a microsecond faster than either one of them for things to go horribly wrong. She had watched them closely over the last several weeks and they had developed a sort of symbiosis. If something happened to either one, she was sure she would lose both of them.

She was worried, mostly, and selfishly, about Tim. He would be driving into danger any minute. He was in charge of the distraction and, in all likelihood, would be an easy target for gunfire. They hadn't even let her loose on the car to put in extra safety features or beef up the bullet resistance. If something happened to him, she wasn't sure how to cope. She had finally let down her guard, finally willing to let someone in.

She knew, logically, that she had been ridiculous. Blocking people out from the most intimate sides of her because she didn't want to feel the pain she had experienced at losing her father. The pain she had witnessed her mother experience as she flailed at an attempt to keep on living without her husband.

She never wanted to feel that kind of love because it opened her up to that kind of hurt. Losing a friend was hard enough, how do you cope with losing your other half?

Jolted out of her inner turmoil by a loud crash from the main lab space, it took Abby a moment to realize that it was glass breaking. Without thinking, she bolted to the door separating the surveillance room from the lab area and yanked it open, shocked to see Carlos Rodriguez coming through the broken glass door behind Jose Esposito, guns gripped firmly in their hands.

xoxo

A/N: OK, so I only heard from Pirate-Princess on the last chapter, hope you guys are still with me. I hope it's not feeling too rushed now and sorry to leave you hanging times two, but there is so much coming that I have to find the appropriate stopping point or I'll post 12,000 word chapters once a week instead of 2-3 thousand every M, W, F, Sa, Su.

Speaking of that, the new story I mentioned is fighting hard to get free and I'm probably going to skip out on a post every now and then to do that. I can't keep writing two chapters a day (one for each story) because I'm not getting any sleep. You should probably see a post on the normal Friday, because I already feel awful leaving you two days with that ending, but probably only one update on the weekend.

Speaking of no sleep and two chapters in one day… any errors, as always, my fault and if this is rough, yeah, that's me too. Sorry.