Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 41

At the other end of the long and mostly boring flight into Afghanistan, Kirkan was directed to the helicopter pad, where a chopper would be arriving soon to take him the short distance to Camp Phoenix. Ziva, meanwhile, headed toward the main road, where a government vehicle and military ID belonging to a nation contributing to the coalition force fighting in Afghanistan got the person she would be meeting waved through the front gate without any questions.

"It is good to see you again, Lieutenant," she said dryly as she slid into the passenger seat of the IDF version of a Jeep. Mossad Officer Raanan Thal just smirked.

"I do not get to wear my uniform often," she replied. "I like to pull it out every once in awhile." She turned the key, resulting in a satisfying roar of the engine starting. "And I am still in the reserves, so I am not even deceiving anybody by showing up as such."

Ziva snorted. She doubted Thal cared much about deceiving anybody; after all, she made her living in espionage. "Have you been back in Afghanistan long?"

Thal glanced at her sideways before navigating the windy path out of the gate. "I got in yesterday," she replied tightly, her eyes focused out through the windshield. Ziva guessed by her tone that her debriefing in Tel Aviv had not gone entirely well—and no wonder, as one of her operatives had been captured by a friendly force and used as a pawn in the oft-convoluted game they all played. She didn't think that this was the appropriate time to bring up her suspicions that the control officer was sleeping with said operative, and they made it the rest of the way to the Mossad safehouse through the uneven streets of Kabul in silence.

"I did not have much time to shop," Thal said as she unlocked the door to the unremarkable-looking house, "so I do not have much to offer, but you can help yourself to whatever you find. If you would like to rest before—"

"I would prefer to get down to business," Ziva interrupted. "The sooner this mission is completed, the sooner Dr. Aachen is returned to her hospital."

"And the sooner we can all go home," Thal finished, her dark eyes glinting with something that Ziva couldn't decide was amused or harsh. She frowned slightly but ignored the comment.

"Did you assemble a team?" she asked as she pulled out a chair from what she assumed was passing as a dining room table, gesturing for Thal to join her, in a manner that made it clear that it wasn't just a suggestion. Reluctantly, the younger woman fell into the seat across from her.

"You did not give me much time," Thal pointed out, getting down to business, "but I did have some success. Ezra is here already. Two of his former teammates from Sayeret Matkal will be arriving later this afternoon."

"Mossad?" Ziva asked with a frown. Thal nodded and took a sip of what Ziva could only assume was water from her canteen.

"Operations," the control officer replied. "Obviously. They do not know about the mission and will have to briefed upon arrival." Ziva nodded distractedly, not as much concerned with working with unknown operatives as she was with Raanan Thal and Ezra Hardoon being on the same mission. This entire case, there had been too much involvement of lovers and husbands and wives, and the whole thing was giving her a headache that had nothing to do with the noise of the C-130. "For that matter," Thal continued, "I do not know much about the mission and would also appreciate being briefed."

Ziva filled her in on the background, explaining what they had found regarding Specialist Jenkins and the stubbornness of General de la Cruz and the reluctance of Agent Burley. "Agent Burley would prefer a more diplomatic approach, but I am not thrilled with the idea of Dr. Aachen being held prisoner on her own base while a territory war is being fought between the general and NCIS."

"And so we attack the base and retrieve the physician?" Thal asked with a frown. Ziva could practically see the former IDF lieutenant calculating the troop movements of their small force to pull such a thing off and smirked slightly before shaking her head.

"Not exactly," she replied. She explained the attack on the convoy just outside the gates of Camp Phoenix and how that had lead them to believe that Dr. Aachen's abduction and the attack were related, and that both events were related to some sort of rescue attempt on the detainment center. "An attack on the base would quickly get the attention of the MP's guarding the base," she continued as she opened her laptop to reveal maps of the base that she wasn't supposed to have. "It would have to be well-timed and appear completely directed on the detainment center. One group would enter the base here, which is near where the detainees are held. Another group would approach here, where we believe Dr. Aachen is being held. Both events would have to be noticed by the MP's in order for them to respond to both. If we are successful, in their search for the insurgents who attacked the base, they will find Dr. Aachen."

Thal nodded slowly. "It is not entirely necessary to enter the base from two different locations," she said thoughtfully. "If we only enter here, where we believe your physician is, they will assume that the target was the detainee center and we will not have to divide our forces."

"Yes, but they are at opposite ends of the base," Ziva pointed out. "We would make it appear that the attack near the housing area was a distracting attack from the detainee center, not the other way around."

"And they would assume that it was an effort to divide their forces," Thal said, understanding.

"Yes."

Thal continued to study the map of the facilities, as if that contained the answers she was looking for. "The fence closer to the detainee center will be better guarded," she finally said. "With only five people on our team, we should dedicate three to this attack. If I, Ezra, and one of his teammates—"

"No," Ziva interrupted, ignoring Thal's frown. "I will not have you and Hardoon on the same attack. You are too closely associated and I do not believe that you could be objective."

She recognized the angry flash in Thal's eyes for what it was, a perceived attack on her professionalism. "You seem to think that there is something going on between us that would not make it possible for us to do our jobs," she repeated in a flat voice. "That is very interesting, coming from someone who has been dating her partner at work for two years."

Ziva refused to let Thal's words bait her into getting angry and saying something that she would regret. "And those two years have taught us what we can and can not do objectively at work," she replied. "You do not have that. You have only recently had a man who should not have become your lover in the first place returned to you from captivity. You are not thinking clearly when it comes to his safety, especially when it comes to planning and executing an attack on a base of the country that held him prisoner for several weeks. If you do not agree to being on separate teams for this mission, then one of you will have to stay behind."

Thal glared at the challenge and muttered something darkly in Dari, a language Ziva had only a passing familiarity with. "Very well," she finally agreed. "There is nothing preventing us from doing our job together, but it is your mission and you are free to set it up as you see fit."

Ziva nodded tightly. "Yes," she said, the syllable effectively ending that argument. "Now go get Hardoon. We will discuss tactics and weaponry while we wait for our remaining team members to arrive."

---

There was something satisfying about packing a backpack with the items for a mission, even when that mission was to enter a friendly military base. It was surprisingly little, when the objective was nothing other that to attract attention and leave without being killed. Not unlike a prison, the base was surrounded by a few layers of security, but unlike a prison, the objective was to keep people out, not in. Wire cutters and clips would get them past the coils of barbed wire; the concrete wall with the glass shards on top would be easily breached with some well-placed C4, which would attract the attention from the MP's that they were looking for. From there, speed and stealth were their best weapons, and the small but accurate handguns Ziva strapped to her waist were more of a backup than a first resort. Once inside the camp's walls, they had to be quick about searching the huts in the back eighth that Agent Burley identified; although it wasn't a large number of the small buildings, the short time they had and the concrete T-walls separating the buildings would make it quite a challenge for her and Thal to find the right hut, throw in a disorienting flash-bang grenade to incapacitate Jenkins or his accomplice, leave the door open to make the MP's suspicious, and get out without getting caught or shot.

After Issac Rabinowisz and David Cohen, Ezra Hardoon's former teammates from the IDF's special operations force, arrived at the safehouse, they filled the two young operatives in on the mission and set a definitive plan. Hardoon, Rabinowisz, and Cohen would attack the detainee center, as they were the best trained, fastest, and strongest of the five, and their job would be more likely to result in returning fire than the breach of the walls near residential area. Once inside the camp, they would throw a few flash-bangs into the detainee center before getting out, making it appear to be an attack aborted by the base's guards. They would detonate the explosives at their section of the wall as close as possible to exactly sixty seconds after Ziva and Raanan Thal breached security on the other side of the base, in order to make it appear that Ziva and Thal were attempting to distract the guards. It wasn't a concept unknown to Al Qaeda and Taliban forces; one of their favorite tactics to disable a convoy was to set up a fake and easily-spotted IED, forcing the convoy to the other side of the road, where the real explosives were waiting to be detonated.

Because speed, not destruction, was their primary objective, they packed light for the mission, only carrying weapons to protect themselves if they had to, the explosives necessary to bring down slabs of concrete, and grenades that, aside from causing temporary blindness and ringing of the ears, were essentially harmless. They briefly debated body armor, in case they didn't get out before the MP's started shooting, but unanimously decided that they couldn't afford to sacrifice speed and agility for the security that body armor provided. Ziva and Thal would be wearing uniforms that, like their weapons, were taken directly from the Operations division of Mossad: a digital camouflage pattern in dark browns and greens, colors that made it easier to blend into the night than plain black, which stood out by being too dark. The men, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction—turbans and the old American woodland camouflage uniforms favored by insurgents, purchased by Rabinowisz and Cohen at some point in their trip to the safe house from Gob-knows-where, fitting perfectly into their cover story for the glimpse that the MPs would undoubtedly get of them.

"Officer David." Ziva turned to face Officer Thal, dressed identically to herself and holding out a dark ski mask. Ziva nodded as she accepted the thin face covering, pulling it over her already braided hair and rolling it up like a hat. "The men are almost ready."

Ziva nodded again. "Fifteen minutes," she said. It was already well after midnight, in what they all knew to be the laziest time of night—after everyone but those on night watch had gone to bed, before anyone woke up to hit the gym before beginning the work day—and they had only a tight window to operate in before they would have to delay everything until the next night. She wasn't thrilled about striking a well-defended military base with so little preparation—as Tony had pointed out to her, if they were caught, this constituted an act of war—but the idea of leaving a physician in the hands of her kidnappers for another twenty-four hours was even less thrilling. Despite their claims of not hurting her, Ziva had found that people willing to commit felonies for money weren't always the most honest out there.

She snapped the slide back on her Jericho 941 and re-engaged the safety before holstering the weapon at the sound of footsteps descending the stairs, barely glancing up at the three men as they approached. All three were in their mid-twenties, making Ziva feel something she didn't often feel: old. Although she knew that she was their age—even younger—when she started in the job that they currently held, the realization hit her hard that she had started working for NCIS in a position that had gradually morphed into one requiring diplomacy and the bureaucratic double-speak she still hated when they were probably still in secondary school.

Almost as hard as the realization that she was a little jealous of them.

"Hardoon, Rabinowisz, Cohen, you have the UAZ," she commanded, referring to the decades-old and Soviet-developed former military vehicle not uncommonly seen throughout Afghanistan. "Thal and I will take her vehicle. Remember, the primary objective is to create a distraction and get out. Casualties are to be avoided."

"Even among the detainees?" Hardoon asked dryly, rubbing the days-old stubble on his chin. Ziva smiled grimly; after hearing the men he had been held with for over a month bragging about what they had done and why they had done it, she could understand his urge to cause pain to men who had done the same things.

"Even among the detainees," she confirmed. She headed for the door before giving any of them a chance to argue, but not before she caught the look between Thal and Hardoon and frowned at the implications of that glance.

People needed to stop mixing work with pleasure. And maybe it wasn't fair that she kept giving people rules that she couldn't even follow herself.