So I apologize for a atrocious lack of updating. I sorry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finals. And then vacation. That's all I have to say.
ANYWAY...Here's a chapter. And it's kinda exciting. I hope you like it.
You'll hate the end, but you'll be glad to know that I have the next chapter written already! BUT..it's handwritten in my notebook between all my Calculus notes. So it'll take some serious craziness to decipher my terrible handwriting.
In any case, rest assured the wait will not be as long as before. :D
Oh yeah. I'm reminding you of the detail that I had planned out this story before we knew the deal with Michelle, so the part with her isn't going to be strictly in sync with the show. I'm using my artistic license.
Chapter 9
After we all stood there and took in the sight before us, shock in all our expressions, Gibbs walked quickly forward and untied Michelle.
"What happened?" he demanded, yet not unkindly. "Who are these people?"
She just shook her head and didn't say anything, her chest heaving as she struggled to control her breathing. Ziva knelt down beside the frightened lawyer and pulled a first aid kit out of her backpack, proceeding to wipe away the blood off her forehead.
"Damn it, Michelle..." Gibbs said. "We know they're terrorists. We know they were the ones who had Jared Ryan blow up the warehouse. What are they planning?"
"I don't know," she whimpered after a moment. "I've been down here for two days and haven't seen anyone, and none of them spoke English."
"Do you what language it was?"
She shook her head again. "No. But it did sound kind of Middle Eastern. I always get them mixed up..."
"How did you get here?" Gibbs pressed on with his questions.
"I received a call from them at work, telling me to…to…" Michelle broke off, overcome for a moment by a fit of coughing. "They told me that I had to produce some file for them or…or…" She broke off then and looked to the floor in what seemed like embarrassment. It made me wonder what in the hell she had to be embarrassed about at a time like this.
"Or what?" Gibbs asked impatiently.
"Or they would kill Jimmy," she whispered. That took me a minute to process; so I guess she and Palmer were still doing some under-cover-after-hours investigating. I wondered why I hadn't picked up on it in a while…was it because of all those months at sea I had lost my ability to pick up on such things? No. Of course not. I suppose they just must have gotten better at hiding the evidence.
"Jimmy?"
"Jimmy Palmer, boss," I clarified, saving Michelle from having to explain. "They have a thing."
"A thing?"
"You know…a thing. Relationship type deal." I was going to use the term 'sex buddies' but didn't think Michelle would appreciate that right now.
Gibbs sighed. I half expected him to whip out his 'Rule Twelve' lecture. I braced myself for it, knowing I would not be able to keep what had happened between me and Ziva a secret if he so much as looked at me. I hated how well he could see into my thoughts like that. But, to my surprise, the sigh was all he did to let us know of his disapproval.
"What did they want?" he continued, getting back to Michelle's story.
"They didn't tell me over the phone," she said. "They hung up after about thirty seconds."
"Why didn't you come to me?" Gibbs said, as per usual.
"They told me not to," Michelle said, and her voice broke in the middle of her sentence. "They knew everything about me, I was afraid they were watching me. They told me to act normal, so I did. I went home on time, like usual, and when I got there four men in masks were waiting in my living room."
She took a deep breath and continued on. "They grabbed me and took me here, asking for inside information. They didn't seem to realize that I was just a lawyer, and that I didn't know anything about the big cases. They asked me a lot about you and seemed to know that I worked for you for a while, but I didn't tell them anything, I swear!"
Tears started flowing again, and Gibbs laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's alright, Michelle," he said. "We'll figure out who did this."
She shook her head. "If he doesn't want to be found, he won't be," she said. "That much I have learned."
"So there is one man in charge?"
She nodded. "I've only seen him once, and the others seem to be afraid of him somehow."
"Name?"
"They call him―"
And then a shot echoed out through the basement, and I felt it rip through the air as the bullet passed too close to my ear. Michelle's head smashed back violently, and blood spattered the back wall, blotting out the 'Hello' in the message for Gibbs in a very Sweeney Toddish way. After the split second it took for all this to happen, and for me to see Michelle's limp body fall to the floor, I turned swiftly around to find the shooter. A shadow at the top of the basement stairs disappeared as I turned. Not even thinking, I immediately chased after the guy, throwing myself up the stairs, my gun up and shouting for the guy to stop.
I could hear the rest of them following me after a moment, and as soon as we all spilled out into the first floor of the house, scrambling through the small trapdoor. Ziva broke away and headed out to cut the shooter off from the outside. I heard running steps in the kitchen and headed that way. McGee and Gibbs headed upstairs as I burst into the kitchen, gun in front of me. The shooter was there.
I brought my gun up and aimed it at him. "Stop, lay down your weapon!" Instead of doing that, the guy brought his gun up too. I sighed, and turned the safety off my gun. I hated shooting people…there was just so much ridiculous paperwork that went with it.
Then there was a thud and the man across the room from me hit the floor. Ziva was revealed, her hand up.
"Thanks," I said, taking the deep breath that I needed.
"No problem," she whispered, rubbing the hand she had punched him with gently.
Gibbs and McGee came into the room then, taking in the sight. Immediately, McGee pulled out his handcuffs and attached the guy securely to the handle of the dishwasher.
"Wake him up," Gibbs ordered, and I pulled one of those harsh smelling things from the first aid kit that the EMT team uses to revive people. With a start, the man jerked up, and his first reaction was to get up and run. But, with one hand attached to the very solid dishwasher, he didn't get very far before he was abruptly yanked back to the floor.
"Release me!" he demanded, his voice carrying a very heavy Middle eastern accent. "You do not know who you are dealing with!"
"Amil Abdul-Jahar?" Gibbs asked.
The man paused for a second, and then began to laugh. "You stupid Americans, always putting your nose in places it does not belong." Gibbs sighed, and then punched the man in the face. Blood trickled down from his nose, and the man continued smiling. "There is nothing you can offer me that will make me talk."
"Who are you working for?" Gibbs demanded, raising a hand in preparation to hit the man again.
"I will not tell you."
Gibbs hit him again. "Who are you working for?" he asked again, shouting this time.
Still no answer.
"Ziva," Boss said wordlessly, making eye contact with her. She nodded, and I saw her pull something sharp and lethal looking from inside her coat and start towards the man sprawled on the floor. He saw what she held, and laughed again.
"You think torture will make a difference?" he asked. "I have been trained against it."
"Let's see how you feel about that when I start taking your fingernails off one by one," Ziva snarled, a light in her eyes I had never seen before. A shiver went down my spine, and I realized that I was about to see her torture someone for the first time. Even though we'd made jokes about it, even though in her every move you could see her lethal potential, I never actually wanted to see it happen. So I turned around, and the man let out a shout scream as Ziva did something unpleasant to him.
"It's too late, anyway," the man gasped, breathing heavy. "The plans that have been set in motion are unstoppable. You cannot triumph this time, Agent Gibbs."
Once again, I surprised at the huge amount of sick terrorists that knew Gibbs by name.
"Why do you say that?" Gibbs asked.
The man was silent, and Ziva decided that was the perfect time to rip off another one of the man's fingernails. He groaned, having not quite mastered the 'suffer in silence' bit. After a moment, he decided to talk. "Plans have been made that, when fulfilled, will wreak havoc and destruction on the American people ten times greater than the attack of September 11th, 2001."
Damn. I hate it when they end up being real terrorists.
"What do we do now, boss?" McGee asked in the general silence that followed this pronouncement.
"We head back to base," he said after a moment. "Pack this guy up and throw him in the backseat between David and DiNozzo."
"Right boss."
"McGee always gets the front seat!" I protested before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth. Gibbs fixed me with a steely glare, and I quickly backtracked. "Which….sucks for him because the backseat is the best seat. It's where the party's at. Not that…where you're sitting isn't fun, I mean…I just…"
"Just quit while you're ahead, DiNozzo," Gibbs said exasperatedly.
"Yes boss."
Suddenly, and with no warning, about six men burst through the doors and swarmed into the kitchen. The man on the floor began to laugh again as we all pulled our guns up again. Gibbs shot first, and took out two before they began to fire back. Ziva took out a couple more, and the last two ran off. And then I, being the stupid imbecile that I am, ran after them.
I managed to corner one in the bedroom, but as I moved forward, gun still up, trying to get close enough for my gun to touch the back of his head so he would cooperate.
Hindsight being twenty-twenty crystal clear, I realized that I probably should have just backed off. But I didn't. So the terrorist with a gun whirled around and attacked me, hitting me right below my shoulder-collarbone area, right about the same area where Frodo got stabbed by the Witch King in the Fellowship of the Ring movie. A sharp, searing pain accompanied the blow, taking the breath out of me and making me gasp. I did not expect pain of this magnitude to come with a punch, but when I looked down, I saw the hilt of a knife protruding from my chest.
Damn.
I heard footsteps in the back of my awareness, pushed to background noise as the pain of being stabbed took up most of my brain.
"Tony!" I heard someone call; it sounded like Ziva.
The man I had attempted to capture grabbed me and spun me around so they could see my face and shouted, "Stop, or the next one is in his heart!"
I saw the shocked faces of Gibbs, McGee, and Ziva, as I looked at them, each one registering the knife.
"No, Tony!" Ziva said, taking an involuntary step towards me. The man holding me grabbed the hilt of the knife in my shoulder and pulled it out roughly. I gasped in pain again, and then stared, wide-eyed, and the hideously long weapon that was colored red with my blood. The moment seemed almost surreal. Blood flowed more easily down my arm than before, drenching my sleeves in its warm stickiness. The knife was the transferred to a position right over my heart, and I could feel the point digging into me.
This was not going to end well.
I raised my eyes from the knife and looked to Ziva. She was staring back at me, fear and worry plain in her eyes. I made eye contact with her, in case the man who now held my life in his hands got overzealous; I wanted her face to be the last thing I saw.
"You will let me leave," the man said. "Or I will kill him. If you come after me, I will kill him. If you try and shoot me, I will kill him. Understood?"
He left no room for negotiation. The man drove a hard bargain.
After a moment or two of Gibbs trying to decide how best to win, he nodded in defeat.
"Weapons over here, please," the man holding me said.
Ziva was the first to throw hers; all seven of them. Two guns, four knives, and that wicked looking hooky thing she used to de-fingernail the guy in the kitchen.
Gibbs and McGee handed their work-issue gun over a second later.
"Excellent. Your cooperation is noted. I might even give Agent…" He leaned forward to check my name tag on my jacket, "…DiNozzo back to you as a reward."
The man slowly began to walk forward, pushing me along with the blade of his knife.
"Be careful!" I said in a scolding tone. "You could seriously hurt someone with that."
I heard Gibbs sigh again, knowing that my smart mouth was going to get me killed. I knew it too, but I didn't have the ability to keep my mouth shut. It was never something I learned properly.
"Stay in the house until you hear us leave," the man ordered.
So I left the house with the guy. My shoulder hurt like hell, and I knew that if they didn't give me some painkillers or something then I would definitely be passing out sometime really soon.
There were two vans waiting for us outside, both identical, right down to the license plate number.
"Get in," the man said, pushing me towards the first one.
I wordlessly did as I was told, seeing no point in resisting. Unless I had a death wish.
Which I didn't.
Far from it, actually. As I remembered kissing Ziva earlier, the will to live had never been stronger. I was shoved into the back of the back of the black van, and the only thing that kept me from passing out from pain as I landed on my injured shoulder was my visions of Ziva dancing in front of my eyes. Ziva laughing, hair in her face, sun on her skin…
There was a man in the back with me, apparently assigned to keep me quiet and under submission. As the van began to move, the man randomly threw a punch in my direction, slamming his fist into the left side of my face. Great. I was overdue for a black eye. It's only been, what, three weeks or so since I'd gotten over my last one? It had been a good one, though…it'd been a long time since my last real bar fight. If I ever made it back to NCIS, I was going to have to thank Vance for all those awesome times as an Agent Afloat.
I felt blood trickling down my chin from the corner of my mouth. Great. Just what I needed; blood loss from another area of my body.
Using my good hand, I slowly widened the hole the knife had made in my shirt, getting blood all over my hands in the process, until I had ripped it all the way around. With a gentle tug, I pulled my shirt sleeve off. I then proceeded to tie it gingerly around my wound, wincing as I went.
"I don't suppose you could help me with this," I asked the guy who had just punched me in the face. He said nothing. Didn't even change expression.
I took that as a 'no'.
We drove for at least forty-five minutes, and the entire drive was nearly silent, punctured only by short, sporadic conversations in what sounded to me like Arabic. But nothing was said in English, and nothing was directed at me, so I spent the majority of the time trying to keep myself from fading into the unconsciousness that I knew was inevitable, considering the amount of blood I'd lost already.
"Where are we going?" I asked finally, well aware that my voice was a pathetic whisper.
"We are not going anywhere, Agent DiNozzo," the man who'd stabbed me said, turning around in the front passenger seat to face me. "Your stop is coming up soon, and then my friends and I are heading to our destination."
"Which is?" I asked, knowing full well I wouldn't get a cooperative answer, but feeling the need to try all the same.
The man laughed. "Now, you really didn't think I would tell you, did you?" he said to me. Then he turned in his seat and addressed the driver. "This is far enough."
The van screeched to a halt, and the only thing that saved me from flying through the windshield was the strong hand clasped on my uninjured shoulder. The van door opened
"I believe this is your stop," the man in the front said, and nodded to the man holding onto me, who then promptly threw me out of the van and into the ditch on the side of the road.
I gasped and groaned as I hit the ground and rolled. Pain ricocheted up and down my body. Black spots dotted my vision, then grew to form a darkness on the edges of my vision. With my last conscious thought, my dimming eyes registered the brightness of the stars in the early morning sky.
GUESS WHAT? I totally got the fifth season of NCIS for Christmas. Yay meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Oh yeah....Forgive any mistakes please. I've had the Harry Potter rap stuck in my head for days and it's screwing with my ability to function like a normal human being.
Party on, dudes.