DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the NCIS characters or plotlines.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The next few chapters will delve a bit into the POV of, shall we say (for fear of spoilers), acquaintances of Ziva. Ziva isn't as solitary as we think she is…

Chapter 3: The Undercover Go Undercover

Mordecai Horowitz had never hated his job as much as he had that day. It was true, he was in a non-field position, he didn't put his life on the line every day like his friends in Intelligence and Komemuite. But he was the one who saw the dark and dirty side of Mossad's administration. He was the one who had to draft condolence letters to the families of officers supposedly 'killed in the line of duty' and then filed the mission reports of their killers. It was timid, stammering, bespectacled Motel was the one who had typed up the mission outlines deemed suicidal for his friends and classmates who had later died or were captured. Kemuel's mission to Ramallah, Raphael's mission to Lebanon, Ziva's mission to Iraq. He could barely face the reality of his life – he worked for the devil.

Simon Rosen had no choice but to remain silent and obey his director's orders. Reaching out to the kill switch, he closed the feed coming in from Al-Qaeda and returned to the previous screen, the frightened eyes of his friend and classmate still burning into his mind.

He cast a momentary glance behind him at Malachi, who had entered just as the feed had pushed through, at Motel, who still stood motionless next to the director. At the Americans frozen in horror in the rear of the room.

He had talked to Ziva only a day or so before she had been recalled. She had sounded so happy, so settled for once, and it was a nice change to hear from his wild childhood companion. She was involved with an American man who sounded to be a good fit for her, a man not intimidated by her passion for life in general.

Malachi Meir knew that something had to be done. Ziva never would have knowingly stranded herself in Iraq, never would have agreed to the mission in the first place without expecting to be extracted. He had suspected that Director David was upset with his daughter for the past year, ever since his order to lock surveillance on her in Washington. He and Zelig had been suspicious of the orders, especially when they saw nothing amiss. So Ziva had a new lover and hadn't told her father. It wasn't the first time, Ziva always had a new lover and she didn't tell her father a thing anymore. And Director David was becoming invasive – their last recon had been so invasive Zelig had nearly refused to submit his report.

"It's her own life, Malachi!" Zelig exclaimed. "Did you see her? This one means something more to her. Goddamn it, she's

happy! That's the first I've seen her happy since Rafi!"

"Well, you tell the deputy director that and see how he takes it," Malachi said quietly. "He's angry. Maybe Motel can tell us more. But you refuse to submit this report, Zelig, you're signing not only her death warrant but yours."

"Get the feed back," Jenny ordered David quietly as she approached. "Get it back. What did they want?"

"More than they will receive, Director Shepard."

"Your officer is still alive, Director David! You get that feed back, we can trace it, we can locate them and send a rescue unit!"

"It is not in my policy to rescue the dead, Director Shepard," David replied stiffly. "That feed would have been a hoax. Al-Qaeda does not capture Jews hiding as Muslims, they slaughter them."

"That's the woman we saw at Baghdad International, Jen," Gibbs said quietly as he came up behind her. "That was Ziva. I don't leave my people behind."

"There is nobody to leave behind, Agent Gibbs," David said again. "She is dead."

Motel couldn't take it any longer. After Director David had left for the evening, he sat down at his computer and sent around an encrypted message to the other officers in his immediate circle, knowing that they would send it on to the other men and women in their units.

She is alive and easily extractable. He will not give the order.

By morning, the director would have a silent revolt on his hands, and an undercover extraction team of the best Motel could assemble would be in Iraq to find and rescue her.

"But who do we send?" Simon asked as they gathered that evening in a local bar.

"Sulaiman, you go," Motel said. "We will need somebody Arabic."

"Lev and Malachi," Sulaiman Ben-Tsion nodded. "We cannot risk sending more. Two Komemuite and an Intelligence should be sufficient. Can we arrange a covered flight?"

"My brother Levi is a pilot," Hiram Davidovich spoke up. "He will gladly fly you into Baghdad undetected. If we contact Etan and Yehudi, you should be able to find a way around the border guards at the airport."

"Simon, get us a copy of the feed registry," Motel said. "You and the Americans work on tracking a location."

"I know that place," Sulaiman interrupted. "We know where we're going. If Simon can work on identifying the captors…"

"Are we bringing the Americans into this?" Myriam Rogel asked sharply. "I thought this was purely a Beth Shalom thing. It's her stupid Americans that got her into this in the first place. Malachi should stay behind and I go in his place –"

"Ziva's Americans will be valuable sources of information, Myriam. And we are not sending another woman into Iraq, I'm sorry," Motel replied sternly. "The rest of us should go about our business as usual. We can't let on to the director that we are running an op without his approval."

"The op shouldn't take any more than a week," Lev Meyer said. "Simon, can you get a hold of Reuven and Sarah? We'll need Sarah's help once Ziva's back in Israel."

"Bring her straight to their home in Jerusalem," Simon said with a nod. "Don't bring her back to Tel Aviv. The Americans can take her from Jerusalem to Washington."

"Will everybody be able to hold up if the director suspects something?" Sulaiman asked quietly, and the field officers in the circle all looked at the non-field officers, especially Motel.

Motel, Leib Mogen, Chaim Cohen and Hiram all looked at each other nervously before nodding slowly.

"For Beth Shalom, yes," Leib replied. "Ziva's been the director's scapegoat for too long." All the group nodded in agreement.

"I will not watch another friend die by his order," Motel said quietly. "Sulaiman, Lev, Malachi, go. Hiram, get a hold of Levi, tell him they leave immediately. Simon, contact Reuven and Sarah, warn them that she's coming. Myriam, you go fill in the Americans. They're staying at the Oz hotel."

"I can't believe he shut off the transmission," McGee muttered, as Gibbs and Tony both sported equally dark glowers. "Her own father –"

"The man's a bastard, he always has been," Jenny cut him off wearily. "His kids were never children, they were pawns and Ziva's been his scapegoat for a long time."

"But to leave her captured by Al-Qaeda?" Tony demanded hotly, just as a knock sounded at the door. He got up to answer it, pulling it open to reveal a young woman about Ziva's age, with long dark hair and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. "You."

"Mr. Hackensack Nudist Society, we meet again," she said with a wry smile. "May I enter?"

"Come in, Myriam," Jenny called. "Jethro, Tony, McGee, this is Myriam Rogel from Komemuite."

"What do you want?" Gibbs asked bluntly.

Myriam sighed and sat down in a vacant chair. "We need your help."

"What makes you think we'll give it to you?" Gibbs retorted coolly.

Myriam looked at him a moment. Then she sighed again and stood up. "Very well. I told Malachi we should not bring you into this. It seems I was right. This is a Beth Shalom problem and we will deal with it ourselves." With that, she left the room rapidly.

"Wait!" came the call from one of the younger agents as she walked quickly down the hall. "Hold on for a second, would you?"

"Yes?" she asked pointedly, turning around.

"You really don't get nuance in Mossad, do you?" he asked. "He didn't say we wouldn't help. He asked why you were trusting us to help you."

Myriam eyed him momentarily. "We have no time to waste on banter. Will you or will you not help us?"

"What are you doing?"

"Rescuing Ziva."

Ziva moaned as she stirred on the humid dirt floor. Where was she? What had happened? Why was she bound? How had she ended up here? Who had brought her here?

Slowly, it began returning to her. She was in an Al-Qaeda prison, captured by Iraqi insurgents when they had caught her trying to pass herself off as Arabic. Her father had abandoned her and refused the transmission her captors had sent.

How long before they killed her? How long before they were through trying to torture her into giving up information on Mossad? She couldn't last much longer, that much she knew for certain.

Carefully, she began trying to undo the knots trying her hands together. The rope was of sufficient length to fashion a noose. The ropes binding her ankles added to the one around her wrists would be enough to lengthen the cord.

It wasn't the ideal way to die, she had to admit, but one had to play the cards one was dealt. They had found her suicide pill. They had taken her weapons. She was left with no alternative.

She would not betray Mossad as she had NCIS.