The Price of Honesty: Chapter 36

Ziva pressed her hand to her side, feeling the warm blood seeping through her fingers as she struggled to catch her breath and stay upright. She finally decided that standing was highly overrated, and slid down the closest wall. "Cohen," she managed. "Report."

"My head was hit. I was briefly unconscious. I am making my way to your position now."

"Hoskins?"

"Dead," he said grimly. "Single shot to the head." He paused. "And Shava?"

"Also dead." She would explain it to him later, sometime after she could concentrate on something other than the pain.

She swung her pistol to the left in surprise at the sudden increase in pressure over her wound, having completely forgotten that there was another person alive in the room. "Relax," Dr. Cunningham said. "I have an unfortunate amount of experience with gunshot wounds, and I'm going to get really pissed if I crawled over here with a broken leg, only to get shot by my patient."

Ziva nodded as she lowered the weapon. "Dunham," she said into her microphone, wincing at the weakness in her voice. "We need an evacuation. There is a POW on site, a Navy physician, with injuries." She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to catch her breath. "There are also around two dozen unfriendlies, both dead and sedated, who need identification."

"And your status?" the NCIS agent asked.

"Shot," she replied. "To my side. It is not serious." She heard Dr. Cunningham snort and shot him a dark look.

"I'll keep you updated."

She returned her attention to Cunningham, taking in the concerned look on his face. "How is it?" she asked.

"The bleeding has slowed down," he said. "Let's take a look." He was only using his right hand—he was holding his left to his side, the bone at an unnatural angle—so Ziva helped him lift her shirt to get a better look at her side. "I think you were right, actually," he said, making her wince as he gently probed the wound. "It's just along the flank, not actually in the abdominal cavity. You might not even need stitches." He lifted his eyes to hers. "Kim is really okay?" he asked tentatively.

"She is fine," Ziva assured him, and she saw his features relax, a slight chuckle coming from his lips.

"Of course she is," he said, now sounding amused. "I should've known better than to think she'd let anyone pull one over on her."

She chuckled, then winced at the pain in her side. "And your injuries?" she asked a minute later.

"Left radius and ulna fracture," he said, nodding to his arm. "And right tib/fib—leg. I know the face looks bad, but I think it's just bruised, not broken."

A sudden noise got Ziva's attention, and the handgun was again up and ready in seconds, lowered when David Cohen entered the room. "You are hit," he said in Hebrew, his face concerned.

"A flesh wound," she assured him in English. She wondered what the large grin that crossed his face was about, and had a sneaking suspicion that Tony would probably be able to explain it to her later. She nodded toward the physician. "Cohen, meet Dr. Cunningham. He is a friend of Agent Tomblin."

Cohen smiled slightly. "I did not know Agent Tomblin had friends who did not regularly carry weapons," he joked.

"We met in Iraq," Cunningham replied.

"That explains it, then."

"David, Cohen." Both Mossad operatives stopped at the sound of Dunham's voice in their ear. "I've gotten in touch with DiNozzo in Bahrain. He'll be leaving by helo within the hour with Agents Tomblin and Freiler and a medical crew. Can you hold tight until then?"

Ziva had no idea what holding onto anything had to do with waiting for reinforcements to arrive, but she saw a slight nod from Cohen and figured that things were good from his end. "Do you need anything specific from a medical crew?" she asked Cunningham.

She could practically see his mind quickly working through all of the recent events. "In addition to basic medical supplies—bandages, pain killers—either ciprofloxacin or doxycycline. For the anthrax, if we've been exposed."

"Did you get that, Dunham?"

"Ciprofloxacin or doxycycline. Got it," the NCIS agent replied. "Dardik and I are going to tear down here and head your way. Hopefully we'll be arriving before the helo. Until then, you're on your own."

"Understood. Thank you, Agent Dunham." Ziva looked up at Cohen. "And we are sure that any threats have been neutralized?"

"Yes," he said, sounding almost amused. "I did a very thorough search of the place. The ones that were tranquilized have been bound in case they awaken. Unfortunately, Shava appears to have gotten to the majority of them first."

"Covering her tracks," Ziva said with a sigh.

"It appears your concerns about her were correct," Cohen agreed. "Does this mean I will soon be hearing an 'I told you so'?"

"I believe we can forgo that for the moment." She began working her way up the wall, accepting Cohen's help when he offered it. "Can you help Dr. Cunningham?" she asked him. "His leg is broken, and I think it would be a good idea if we are in open air when that helicopter arrives." She took a few experimental steps; her side burned, but she could walk. "And while we wait, perhaps the doctor could tell us how the threat of harm to Agent Tomblin led him to Yemen."

---

Jeff Cunningham had never been so angry in his life.

"Steph, you're overreacting—"

"I'm not overreacting, Jeff. You've been a different person since you arrived in Iraq—"

"I am not a different fucking person!" he cut her off. "I am the exact same fucking person I was four months ago—"

"You see, Jeff, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You're always angry, and I've never heard you swearing so much—"

"I am around f—around Marines twenty-four hours a day, Stephanie. How the hell do you think you would talk?"

"But I wouldn't be around Marines!" He felt his fists—both of them, even the one holding the clinic phone—clinch into tight fists, and he began banging his head against the wall, not even caring if his fiancée—ex-fiancée?—could hear it. "It took me a while to get over your Navy thing—"

"My 'Navy thing' is my life, Stephanie. I never fu—I never lied to you about that."

"It's a job. It's not your life."

He gave a bitter laugh. "How the hell do you think anyone would be able to convince me to go to the middle of a fucking warzone if it was just a fucking job? You told me you understood that—"

"I thought it would just be a few years—"

"Fifteen! Fifteen fucking years, Steph! I told you it was fifteen fucking years! At the least! You knew I went to the Naval Academy. You knew—"

"Do you really see yourself working on some Navy base for your entire career?"

"Yes!" he shouted. "Yes, I do! Dammit, Steph, I love my job! Yeah, Iraq sucks. Yeah, it makes me a pretty angry person sometime, but these kids—"

"And you're just proving my point!"

"Stephanie—"

"This was not a decision I took lightly, Jeff! There was already a deposit in on the reception hall—"

"Do you think I'm honestly thinking about the fucking reception hall right now?"

"Don't make this more difficult than it needs to be. You being in Iraq has made me realize that we're two different people—"

"We have always been two different people, Steph. You said that that was you loved about me, that I wasn't the same as everyone else around Harvard—"

"Jeff… We should have realized sooner…"

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Listen. I'll call you tomorrow, when we've had some time to think—"

"I told you! I have thought about this! Jeff, I already sent the ring to your mother…"

"Fine!" he yelled when her voice trailed off. "Fine, Steph. Have a good fucking life." He angrily hung up the phone before picking up the receiver again and banging it against the wall. "Fuck!"

"Careful, Cunningham." He spun around quickly to see Tomblin leaning against the clinic counter. "You might need that phone someday."

"What the hell are you doing here?" he snapped, not caring about whose feelings he hurt at the moment.

The petite MP pointed into one of the bays. "Jacobs twisted his ankle playing football. It's a banner day for my company." She offered him a tight smile. "Sorry. About that." She pointed at the phone. "I'm sure if you give her some time—"

"She already mailed the fucking ring to my mother."

"Oh." She stared into the bay for a moment before looking back at him. "Well, it looks like your PA has everything taken care of. You want to go shoot something?"

Countless rounds of ammunition at a surprisingly deserted range later, he had to admit that Tomblin was onto something with suggesting going shooting. There was something about knocking down targets that made him feel infinitely better about the fact that his fiancée had dumped him from thousands of miles away while he was taking care of Marines fighting a war. "I don't even think it's the fact that she called it off that pisses me off so much," he said as he slapped another magazine in the M9. "I think it's the fact that she did it when I'm in fucking Iraq."

"Life sucks," Tomblin said simply. He caught the smile that she was trying to hold back tugging at her lips. "And then you die."

"Is this where you say 'oorah' or something?"

"Something like that." This time, she was grinning outright. "You wanna make this interesting?"

"How interesting?" As if he had a shot in hell at beating her.

"Dinner?"

"Burger King?"

"Ooh, big spender." She gave him a teasing grin.

"I'll even let you get the large fries. Nothing too extravagant for me," he replied dryly. "After all, I graduated from Harvard."

There was something about the way she chuckled, something that made him realize something that he felt he should have realized a long time before. With Stephanie, it was always about being someone he wasn't, about hoping that attending medical school at Harvard would make him fit in, when he always felt like the kid from rural Pennsylvania who liked to fire guns and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Around Tomblin, all he ever had to be was Cunningham, and he could say and do whatever he damned well pleased, and she'd just chuckle and give that little smile of hers. He could tell her exactly what he thought about everything she said, and she would do the same, and he had never gotten along better with anyone in his life.

Without thinking about it—and he probably should have thought about it, considering she was holding a loaded weapon—he had closed the space between them, lifting her chin and tilting his head down to meet her lips with his. He could tell she was surprised at first, and then she started to respond, her lips opening and her left hand coming up to his neck. "Jeff…" she murmured when they came up for air. "What the hell are we doing?"

"I don't know," he admitted. He was looking down at her—damn, she was tiny; he had never appreciated that as well as he did at that moment, standing so close to her—when her eyes opened, and saw the conflict in them. She pulled away, returning her attention down the firing range.

"Not at the range," she finally said, glancing back up at him before turning to the weapon in her hand. She flipped the safety and stuffed the M9 in her holster. She began to head for the exit before turning to him, eyebrows raised. "Are you coming?"

Yeah. Definitely should have realized that a long time before.