Chapter 36
Gibbs cursed a colorful string of language, half of which he had only ever used while in combat or marriage.
This had not been part of the plan for their mission today.
Watching as Tony and Ziva climbed into the back of a van with Eduardo Rodriguez and two other men. They were supposed to be meeting Rodriguez's contact for the terrorist cell at the cartel leader's house, not going anywhere.
"McGee, Abby, don't you lose them." Gibbs said, certain his displeasure was clear in his voice.
Abby's voice came through with an edge that probably rivaled his own. "If they get out of the residential area to somewhere we can track them, then yeah, we won't lose them."
"I'll follow at a distance and report back on the streets as we go." He responded as he pulled out a block behind the van. "Let me know when you've got a visual and I'll drop back."
McGee's tone was far more controlled when he responded, "We'll track ahead in several directions, too, so you know when to close back in for visual tracking."
They followed or tracked the vehicle through traffic cameras for twenty minutes through light and heavy traffic until the van reached a small airstrip on the outskirts just west of Miami.
Gibbs watched from a long distance through binoculars as four of the five climbed out of the van before it sped off, leaving them standing there in front of a small hangar.
Watching with a knot in his gut, certain he should call in reinforcements and put an end to this here and now, he saw Omar Haulia exit the hangar. The suspected terrorist they had been searching for was flanked by two other olive skinned men. Gibbs didn't recognize the other men, but he was familiar with the submachine guns each man carried.
After a thorough pat down and another man approaching Tony and Ziva with some kind of wand, presumably to check for listening or tracking devices, the men led his agents inside.
"They've been scanned, if they move I want those tracking devices on." Gibbs relayed to the rest of his team back at the safe house.
"They're ready to rock, just give me the word and we'll light them up." Abby replied. She sounded cocky, but there was no reason she shouldn't. Having the devices in place, but not activated had been her idea. By leaving the tiny bugs in the agent's shoes off through the preamble, they had managed to avoid detection.
They would not be swept again now that they had been checked. If they had gone with the original plan of assuming they might get a pat down, but that a sweep for bugs would be overkill and just leaving them active, the mission would be over now.
There was no movement at the hangar once the agents were moved inside and Gibbs was starting to get antsy.
He did not like surprises, especially on a mission of this magnitude.
What he saw next made his language earlier sound like a nursery rhyme in comparison to what profanities spilled from his mouth.
xoxo
Ziva was feeling what it must be like to be Gibbs as she walked beside Tony into the small airplane hangar. There was a light aircraft, a Cessna 340, taking up most of the space inside the small hangar. She felt her gut clench and had a vague surreal moment to wonder if this was how Gibbs and his gut spoke of trouble to come, and if he was feeling it too.
As if on cue with her thoughts, as they entered the building, the plane's engines fired to life.
The sudden noise startled her and she reached for the gun she no longer had after being frisked on entry. Tony laughed as he slung an arm over her shoulder. To an outside observer it would look like a casual move and the chiding he threw out about it just being a plane would also, but she could feel the way his fingers dug in just a little too tightly to her shoulder as they walked.
They were instructed to enter the light aircraft, she felt Tony's arm fall off her shoulder as he took her hand. For all intents and purposes, it looked innocent enough, but the rhythmic tightening of his digits let her know he was as uncomfortable with this as she was.
Her brain did the manual calculation. Gibbs was certain to be a short ways off from their location, staying out of sight to protect their cover. By the time he realized they had been loaded on a plane and it was moving out of the hangar, it would be too late. On a plane this small, it would be less than a minute before they were airborne.
He would never stop the plane in time.
Calculations continued running through her mind. This series of planes had an average cruising speed of about two hundred and eighty miles an hour. With a full tank and the full five passengers, most of which were reasonably large men, they could be airborne for near six hours or approximately sixteen hundred miles.
If they headed south, it would probably be towards Cuba considering their company. However, she would prefer the longer flight to South America. Columbia would be preferable to Cuba as the travel for Gibbs and the team would be easier to a country that didn't have such strong embargos.
If they headed North, they could end up in Canada, though that was an unlikely prospect. West, over the gulf, they could easily make it to Mexico. Not ideal, but also better than Cuba as they could find transport back to the US through motor vehicle and not have to worry about supplies on a boat across the ocean.
As the plane rumbled through take off, she grasped Tony's hand across the tiny aisle, and calmed herself by making a mental inventory of supplies they would need when they stole a boat for their trip home. She had felt the turn and now they were heading South, probably the worst possible scenario, because they would be on their own if something went wrong.
Her supplies list grew larger as she contemplated everything they may need and she found herself amused as she threw in a few things that were ridiculous, because it was only about two hundred miles from Cuba back to the United States.
Depending on the size of boat they could steal, they would make it back to the US in six to twelve hours barring complications. If they were being pursued or their arrival in Florida would be anticipated, they may be required to detour to another state on the Gulf coast, hitting Louisiana or possibly as far away as Texas.
That trip would take them as much as two days, so she began planning for two days. In her head, she began plotting a vacation away from this mission more than the simple survival of fleeing with nothing but the clothes they had on, which was probably how it would play out in actuality.
Still her list grew of things she would want to have on a boat alone with Tony for two days and she felt it having the desired effect of calming her and focusing her attention.
It was several minutes later, her mind wandering over things she may or may not need when a sudden thought struck her. She tried to think her way out of the realization, tried to reason with her calculations, tried to interpret the facts in any way but how they were presenting in her mind just then, but she couldn't.
She felt a sudden and violent chill down her spine as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her at the realization. Now, more than ever, she wanted to be anywhere but on this plane.
xoxo
Tony's heart was racing as they sat in the small twin-engine plane and roared towards the south. He tried to stay calm, not jump to the negative right away. They were probably just going to meet with the others in the terrorist cell or the drug cartel leaders outside the US. This didn't have to end badly.
Rodriguez was sure to still be on their side, from the threats on the safety of his family that they had implied. He sat just in front of Tony with the man who had frisked them. The olive skinned stranger spoke in hushed tones in a language Tony didn't recognize, but wouldn't have been able to interpret over the noise in the cabin if he had.
He and Ziva were in the back two seats of the four in the rear, the cockpit held the pilot and the suspected terrorist who seemed to be the leader, at least back at the hangar for the small group there.
He had to focus on his breathing, because the further they flew from back up, the more nervous he got about this whole ordeal. It didn't help that Ziva suddenly began to grip his hand with a force that was causing sharp pain in the joints there. When he looked to her face to gauge what was going on, he was surprised by the panicked expression he had never seen.
She was staring straight ahead, obviously thinking very hard about something as if to convince herself that things weren't as bad as they seemed. Much the same way he had been doing just a moment before. Perhaps he was reading the situation wrong, maybe it was nothing, but he didn't think so.
Despite the pain lancing up his arm he managed to squeeze her fingers back reassuringly, but that just resulted in her turning the full, terrified expression his way.
He was unprepared for the force of it.
Trying to make light of it, knowing they had an audience and couldn't speak freely in the small space, he smiled at her and said, "These small planes are just as safe as the big ones."
She nodded at him as if finally coming back to the situation at hand and slowly her grip on him relaxed.
The expression left her face, but he could tell from looking into her eyes that she was still troubled by something. She seemed to realize that her momentary lapse in calm could have blown their cover and she masked over everything, putting on a fake smile, "Thank you, motek. You always know how to get me through my irrational fears."
He returned the smile with a practiced ease for faking it, "You know me. Anything to make you smile, baby." The term of endearment rolled off his tongue as easily as hers had, but he saw her flinch and he couldn't help wondering what the hell was going on with her. She was going to blow this whole thing in midair and get them both killed.
She was silent for a long time, but when she finally spoke, her words were soft and full of thinly veiled emotion, "I don't want to be Sophie."
"It's a good thing you're not, then, huh?" he responded immediately, before even allowing it to process that somehow she had lost her cover identity and was regressing to their first undercover operation as Jean-Paul and Sophie, international assassins.
The pained look in her eyes told him that he was missing something. She was obviously trying to tell him something in code, so he started to play through the events of that experience.
Did she mean she was worried this operation would end as that one had, or was she anxious because they didn't have back up, without which that operation would have ended in their deaths?
He ran through scenarios from that experience in his head, got stuck for a moment thinking how that was the first time he had felt exactly how intense their passion could be. Nothing seemed to click.
He started running case facts in rapid succession through his head and then flashed on Ziva walking out of the bathroom while he was talking to the fed dressed as the maid. Her words in that moment came back to him.
He felt like he had just taken a blow from a sledgehammer in his solar plexus. His stomach knotted furiously and he couldn't seem to take in a full breath.
She couldn't be telling him what she was telling him. It couldn't be. Not now. Not here. Not while they were possibly being led into danger. Not while they may have been flying towards a slaughter to have their bodies buried in some shallow grave as fertilizer for the next crop of pot plants in Cuba or some worse fate that he couldn't even imagine.
It took several long seconds before he was able to breathe again and his mind cleared enough to speak in a low tone, hoping the drone of the engines on either side of them would be enough to mask their conversation from eavesdropping, "Are you sure?"
"It has been over six weeks." She responded. "I did not think about it, because we have been so focused and time seemed to pass without me really recording it."
"Could it just be stress?" he asked, he'd known enough women in his time to know there were other reasons for this exact situation.
She just shook her head.
He looked in her eyes and saw her certainty. He couldn't help a tiny smile as he reached across to place a hand on her stomach. He looked her in the eye, hoping she could see the silent promise that he was making to her.
He would do whatever he had to do so that they made it out of here unharmed.
He blinked back a sudden moisture building in his eyes and could have kicked himself for the reaction he was having, but he was not alone. Knowing it wouldn't blow their cover, he leaned across the space at the same moment she did and gave her a gentle kiss.
He shifted a little further to place his mouth near her ear; he had to make sure she had understood. He whispered softly, "We'll keep her safe. She's going to be beautiful, just like her mother."
He heard the muffled sob against his shoulder, and didn't pull away for several seconds as Ziva composed herself. He finally felt her straightening back into her chair as she looked up into his eyes, any trace of tears or sadness buried once again.
"She?" was all she asked, a hint of humor in the tilt of her lips.
Tony just shrugged and grasped her hand again in the space between their seats as he slipped back into his mind. He had to work out further thoughts on how they could take control of this situation with no weapons and no back up.
He was shocked at the variety of emotions rolling through him. He had always been protective of those he loved, but he had never imagined this moment being a new level of frightening. He felt an ache in his chest, a keen apprehension building there that was soul deep, but at the same time, he was overwhelmed with a flood of warmth and joy.
He glanced at Ziva out the corner of his eye and noticed her contemplative expression as she continued to size up the men in the airplane with them. His smile widened slightly.
She was strong, they were strong, and they could do this. They had to do this.
Suddenly he was grinning like a fool, as it sank in fully. They were going to have a baby. The smile fell almost as quickly as he followed her gaze and his thought amended itself, if they survived.
xoxo
A/N: Sorry for the delay over the long holiday weekend. I appreciate your patience with me on working through this.