"Tony's gonna watch her until we figure this out so just bring her by his apartment tonight," Gibbs informs Ducky from his cellphone. Ducky had to stay home with Hannah since, for the moment, they were not sure if they wanted everyone back at Mossad to know they had found her.
"Does young Ziva know of her niece yet?" the doctor questions. Perhaps if Ziva knew she had even more to fight for then it would give her all the more inspiration to end this. Ziva was Hannah's last living relative, that was not trying to kill her that is. Hannah needed someone to care for her and Ducky believed that Ziva would be the perfect person to do so. The more time he spent with Hannah the more of Ziva he saw in her.
"Not yet, Duck. Until we can stop that damn microphone we can't tell her anything besides the weather forcast." Gibbs' frustration was growing already even though it had only been a few hours. They needed to be able to talk if they were going to sort this out. No more notes, no more hints towards what they actually wanted to say. They needed to be able to speak and conspire, all together. If they wanted to stop this communication was necessary, and they wanted to stop this.
"Do not make haste, Jethro. From what you have told me your decisions will bring great consequences. Turning the microphone completely off could cause death. For Ziva, Anthony, Timothy, You. Perhaps even Abigail. It would be wise to proceed cautiously."
"You think I'm taking this lightly, Doctor?" Gibbs asks a slight hint of irritance in his voice.
"I did not say anything among those lines, Jethro. You handle every case with great care and I know, for a fact, this one particularly. However your passion for the case and compassion for others can cause you to make rash choices without fully thinking the end result out. It may usually work out in your favor but there is more at stake than angering some lawyers in this case. Remember that."
Gibbs looks around the corner to see Ziva staring intently at the computer, her hands flying over the keyboard with ease. She pauses and raises her hand catching a paper ball that Tony had tossed over towards her desk. She smiles smugly at him as he stares at her dumdfoundly and does not even react when the paper ball, in turn, collides with his head. "I can't forget, Duck," he says but leaves the doctor no time to respond before closing the phone and ending the call. Gibbs hears the two agents laughter from the other side of the room and sighs. There was too much to loose for him to forget.
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McGee walks down to the lab, a Caf-Pow in hand for a certain forensic scientist. He peaks his head in but sees no one. Setting the Caf-Pow on her desk he makes his way into the room with her computer to find her in Abby's safety corner. That's what he had come to call it. Whenever she was feeling sad or worried she would grab Bert and wedge herself in between the cabinet and the wall.
"Abby?" McGee asks, concern laced in his voice.
"I can't figure out a way to help her," she says not even looking up at him.
"Abby, we'll figure something out."
"How do you know?" she asks her voice getting louder, finding it's strength.
"I just...It'll be fine, Abby," he says again doing the best he could to reassure her when he himself needed reassurance
"You don't know that, Tim! You didn't see Gibbs this morning, even he couldn't say that he knew how to fix this. Gibbs always knows how to fix things. If he doesn't know what to do then who does?" she asks standing up and staring McGee in the eyes, the hippo left behind on the floor.
"Abby, I just-we will," he tries to find words, tries to find a way to make sure there were no more doubts in her mind that this wouldn't be okay.
"See even you can't say it. Even you don't know," she tells him. "We have to help her, McGee," and with that pulls him into a hug his arms holding her just as close.
"We will." Abby was right, they had too.
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"What are you writing anyways? We haven't had a case in a week," he says even though it was technically untrue. They had had a case on a petty officer that had seemingly hung himself but handed it over to a different group of investigators at NCIS since it was right before they left to go to Israel.
"There is always something to be done, Tony. Perhaps you would know that if you did not spend so much time playing tennis."
Tony gives her a questionable look, "You mean tetris right?"
"The thing on your cell phone with the blocks," she says.
"Yeah, that'd be tetris. See tennis is when you take a racket and hit tennis balls. Tetris is when you match the same colored blocks to stay below the line," he points out. He could almost swear that her English deteriorated a little each time she went to Israel. Definitely too many trips had been taken to there this year.
Ziva rolled her eyes and then once again began typing. "Come on, come on!" Tony begins chanting to himself. Ziva slowly turns her head to look at him giving him her very well known 'death glare'.
"It's a, ah, rather competitive-" he stops, making a grimacing face as the sound that signified that you had lost the game was made. "-Game."
"Is it, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asks stopping in front of the senior field agent's desk.
"Well actually, boss..." Tony stops since he has nothing to say. He had been hoping he would just be cut off. "I'm just gonna put my phone away and do some work."
Gibbs says nothing but just walks over to his desk. It wasn't like he had anything to do though. He could sit there and stare at his keyboard as he had done that morning but frankly he would rather do something a little more productive. Instead he just turns around and makes his way to the elevator. He wasn't going to just sit around when people's lives were at stake. He was gonna do something.
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"Tell me you've got something, Abby," Gibbs says as he walks into the lab. A stone set expression of determination on his face.
"I think we might," Abby tells him a big smile plastered on her face.
"Boss, Abby and I were talking and we-"
"We think there's a way we might be able to hack into Ziva's wires!" Abby finishes for McGee. Her excitement and impatience getting the better of her.
"How?"
"Well the intergal part is that we can redirect where the GPS signals are coming from and then take it from there and rerouter the source back to where that is coming from. Since this whole thing is so much on the hush hush I'm pretty sure the director wouldn't be using the main Mossad connection and is probably using his own source. That way our IMCP protocol should be strong enough and if we can find the FTP or HTTP we just might be able to hack into the system," Abby says a proud smile on her face.
"Can we do all that without them knowing?" Gibbs asks a little unsure of just what "all that" was.
"We should be able to get into the system before he's alerted of the intrusion."
"And if we can't?"
Abby looks down, not really wanting to answer that question. "He might know."
"What will this give us?" Was it really worth it? was more like Gibbs' question but he thought that the one he chose was better.
"Not much, honestly. A location of where the source is coming from and we'll have the same eyes and ears that they do."
"Can we tweak stuff?"
"Well Gibbs, they would know if we did and-"
"Could we tweak what their "eyes and ears" see and hear?" Gibbs asks again, cutting Abby off.
"Yes, if there's anything to tweak with. We'll have complete access of the entire system, but changing stuff could alert him that we're there Gibbs," Abby says, her tone over taken with worry.
"Do you think you can break in without him knowing?" Gibbs questions once again. Knowing the odds of failure as well as success may help in the decision process. A decision that wouldn't be easy to make one way or another.
"That's the easy part, at worst if he does catch us and starts to retrace we can just shut the system down. Once we're in we're in. Even if we log out we can create a backdoor on his account which will grant us access whenever we want."
"Could you take audio tapes from before and switch them to what they're listening to now?"
"Well they aren't stored on tapes, Gibbs and if it's still stored in the system, yeah. We could change what they're hearing out of the microphone with anything else that's stored on the same hard drive."
"Go ahead," Gibbs says but for once his gut isn't telling him what to do. The fact that he did not know the right thing to do scared him. The unsureness of the situation made him rethink every thought he had. The fact that he had so much hesitance made him aware by just of what Ducky had told him. Hastiness could cost them their lives, cost hundreds their lives. "Hold off." And with that he was gone.
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"They call it football in Mexico, only Mexico," Tony says to Ziva. The two of them had gotten into a long, in depth, and confusing conversation over sports, their names, and their purpose.
"And why not in America?"
"Because in America football is...Well football."
"But you do not use your feet!" she exclaims just as Gibbs walks into the squadroom. Once again silently sitting down at his desk. He pulls out a piece of paper and begins writing a note on it.
"If you two are all done I need you to enter this into the system, David," Gibbs says placing the note down on her desk. She lifts it up, confused as to what Gibbs wanted her to do.
Is your computer tapped?
She looks at him and then shakes her head, giving an all clear. Tony and Ziva exchange a confused look as Gibbs messes around with his computer for a bit and after a few slaps to the monitor finally stops and begins to type. Tony sends a questioning look to Ziva who shrugs and she then sends the same look, getting the same response. After a few minutes a ding is heard and as Ziva sees that she has received an email. She pulls it up and begins to scan it's contents.
Abby can hack into your father's control center. He could discover that we're intruding. We'd have access to everything on the system but it's dangerous. Is this a risk you're willing to take?
Ziva stares at the words, the first bit of progress they had made in all of this. It was a step into danger but it was also a step to ending this all. It was a risk for all of them. Not just for her, not just for the team but for hundreds of people and all of those hundred of people's families. All of this was her choice. On one side it could get them one step closer to finally finishing this, on the other they could die and next time her father may go a route that leaves nothing to chance, no one to try and stop it. She knew what had to be done, had to be risked. If they were willing to risk their own lives shouldn't she? It was not concern for her life or what destruction may be cast upon her shoulders, but of those who she spent all her time with. Those of which cared about her. If any of them died because of her she would never forgive herself. Was that selfish? To put the worries of your loved ones before so many more people. She didn't know exactly what progression this may bring them or what disaster in the event that it did not go well. She knew her answer but that did not prevent her from debation. The choice was hard but it was obvious, what other choice did they have? She places her hands on the keys, hitting each one in seemingly slow motion. Then in the same slow movement she hits the send button. It was a decision that had been placed on her shoulders and now she just hoped that they would not regret it.
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Okay guys I'm sorry. I know this chapter was a bit on the crappier side but right now I'm just glad I can make coherent sentences. I woke up today feeling absolutely terrible but I wanted to post anyways. Now I'm not so sure if that was the best decision because I honestly have a bit of hatred set towards this chapter. Hope I didn't disappoint you readers too much with it and I assure you the next chapter will be better!