DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of NCIS.

Chapter 4: Rescuing Ziva

She had to be careful about the timing. Al-Qaeda's guards would check in on her every six hours. Her interrogator came in every twelve hours, three hours off from the second round of guards. Various insurgents would look into her cell every two hours off from the guards. It made suicide extremely hard to manage. No, preservation, not suicide – suicide sounded so cowardly.

Ziva froze as another guard looked into her cell, the ropes once binding her wrists hidden behind her back.

"It's too bad your religion forbids suicide, yes?" the guard asked with a smirk. "Now would be a good time to die, Jew."

"At least we don't make our children blow themselves up because we're too cowardly to do it ourselves," Ziva returned with a hiss.

The guard sniffed in return. "You know nothing, Jew," he muttered and closed the door. Ziva returned to work.

"This is the one time I hope they found the suicide pill," Sulaiman muttered under his breath to Lev and Malachi as they watched the Al-Qaeda prison. "I'd hate to think we did all this for nothing."

"Ziva doesn't carry a suicide pill, does she?" Malachi asked in surprise.

"Ever since Kemuel was beheaded," Lev nodded. "She never wanted to be captured alive."

"Hmm. A lot of good that did her," Malachi sighed.

David looked around the task room suspiciously. "Rosen!" he snapped. "Where is Officer Meir?"

"I don't know, sir, he requested today off," Simon replied immediately.

"He did, sir, I have the validated request right here," Motel spoke up, handing him the request authorization form.

"Oh. Well, get me Ben-Tsion, Moshe. I have an assignment."

"Mordecai," Motel muttered.

"What was that?" David asked.

"Nothing, sir. Officer Ben-Tsion hasn't shown up to work yet. Neither has Officer Meyer."

"Hasn't shown up?" David said.

"No, sir," Motel replied, "and they're not answering their home phones or cell phones."

"Write a disciplinary letter then and find Officer Rogel. Must I instruct you in everything, Moshe?"

"No, sir," Motel sighed, taking off before David could think of something else to berate him about. Some days there was just no winning with him.

"Hey, Myriam," Motel said as he entered the Komemuite office. "Director David has an assignment for you. I'd go as fast as you can, he's not in a good mood today. Sandrine, I need Sulaiman and Lev's dossiers, please."

"Yeah, where are they, any way?" the Komemuite supervising officer asked as she found the two dossiers.

"Unaccounted for. I'm putting a disciplinary note in these."

"Why are we going to Jerusalem again?" Tony asked.

"The extractors are bringing Ziva there. They've got a friend who's a medic living in Jerusalem," Jenny replied. "There's too many people involved in this operation in the same place. We're liabilities."

"How do we know when they've got Ziva?" McGee asked quietly.

"They'll find a covert way to contact us," Gibbs replied, pressing down the gas pedal just a little more.

Ziva secured the knot to the pipeline running above her head. She had only minutes to go, somebody would be entering soon.

Taking a deep breath, she slipped the noose around her neck. She heard voices in the distance.

She kicked out the chair from beneath her.

"Damn it, Sulaiman, I thought you said you knew where you were going!" Lev exploded as Sulaiman returned a little worse for the wear with his run-in with the Al-Qaeda guards. "You don't have a damn clue where she is, do you?"

"I know what the Al-Qaeda prison looks like, Lev, I spent two years in it!" Sulaiman spat back. "She's not there, they must've moved her!"

"Now what the hell are we supposed to do?" Malachi demanded, looking around uneasily. "Not only are you two unaccounted for at Mossad, but we're a bunch of Jews stuck in Iraq!"

"Hey, I'm half-Druze," Sulaiman protested.

"Almost as bad as a Jew," Malachi replied. "Well, I'm not leaving Ziva behind."

"And how do you propose we find her?" Lev snapped.

Sulaiman hesitated momentarily before he opened up the fist clenched tightly at his side. "I don't think we're going to."

In the palm of his hand was a scrap of the veil Ziva had been wearing, bloodied and torn.

"Jew. Jew, you must wake," came a quiet, urgent voice in Arabic.

Ziva moaned as she slowly came to. They had cut her down... "I will not tell you anything, Arab."

"I am not asking for information. You do not have much time. Which country do you come from?"

"I will tell you nothing."

"Israeli, then. Only Mossad would refuse to identify their country. You must listen to me, and listen carefully. We do not have much time. I am putting you on an Al-Qaeda transport destined for Jerusalem. You will be wrapped in canvas. You must not move during the trip, no matter what happens, or you will truly be killed. The truck will be passing by Israeli border security. The security guards will let the transport pass, and you must let them go. They will, however, find you and remove your body with some of the cargo. After that, you will be free to go back to where you came from."

NCIS could only drop to the ground in shock as they watched the conversation going on on the doorstep of the Rosen house.

One of the Mossad officers was shaking his head as he spoke to Reuven outside the front door.

Sarah shook her head faintly, her hand over her mouth. "No... no..."

Reuven came back inside and looked around the room. "It seems that the deputy director was right."

"Sulaiman found nothing?" Sarah asked softly.

"Nothing," Reuven confirmed, wrapping his arms around her as she buried her face into his shoulder. "They are likely shipping her body back to Mossad as we speak."

"Or what is left of it," Sarah murmured.

"The difference between Mossad and NCIS," Gibbs said coldly, standing up and gesturing for Tony, McGee and Jenny to do the same, "is that we don't give up on our people until we have their body lying on an autopsy table. We're going back to Mossad, and if that damn director doesn't want to answer any questions, we will tear that building apart until we find out what I want to know."