So, I managed to write an update pretty quickly, considering how inconsistent with writing I have been recently. I think my new way of approaching writing is working for me, though - hopefully I can carry over the success I had here with my other projects.
As I had close to a dozen guest reviews last chapter, answering them all would make this author's note too long. So I will just say thank you very much for taking part in showing me this story still had an interested audience, and another thank you goes to everyone else with accounts who did the same!
Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.
Tony's gut said he needed be out of the hotel room right now.
He was moving less than three seconds after first seeing the gunmen enter the hotel.
He went to the couch and picked up Tali, holding her close and grabbing up her stuffed lion at the same time. He would need it to help him keep her quiet. Then he tapped Senior on the shoulder with the hand holding the lion. "Open the front door. Now."
"Junior, what's ha—"
"No time. Open the door."
Senior did, pocketing his room key at the same time. Tony's eyes went up and down the hallway, scanning for a place to hide that wasn't their room. His training told him this was no ordinary terrorist plot. There was no way a group as large as the one outside could operate as they were without serious help. Not in Israel. Not with how obsessive they were about security. And there was no reason why they would attack a hotel of all things with so large a force. Why not a more political or strategic target?
Not the time to think, a voice in the back of Tony's head chided. It sounded a lot like Gibbs.
The room door right across the hallway opened. An older couple stepped out. The man was tall, a little overweight, had pale skin, no hair, and with more wrinkles around his grey eyes than Tony had years in his life. The woman had very tanned skin and greying black hair, with few wrinkles around her dark eyes. She was clearly in better shape than the man.
"What's going on out there?" The man asked, bent slightly from age. He had an English accent.
"Hotel's under attack."
The man didn't even blink. "That right? I suppose that puts a damper on our vacation, love."
The woman nodded, barely looking concerned. "It does," she said with an Israeli accent.
Tony's gut said their reaction said a lot about their past, but he didn't have time to analyze it. "We need to hide."
The man nodded. "Leave it to a Brit to save the Yanks. Get in."
Tony moved into the room, Senior right behind him. Once inside, the man closed the door and locked all three locks on it. "Love, the window."
The woman walked to the back of the main room of the suite and shut the blinds, darkening the room. Tony understood the strategy: silence repelled attention, and darkness meant silence to most. Generally speaking. He hoped—prayed—it was enough.
They waited in darkness for what seemed like an eternity. Muffled gunfire from outside was a constant, but occasionally, there were louder shots that came from inside the building. The gunmen were attacking anyone in sight.
Tali started crying again. Long, loud wails that pierced his heart.
Tony didn't blame her; this was terrifying. But he couldn't let her keep doing this. He gave her to Senior. "Take her. To the to bathroom. Close the door, stuff towels underneath it. That should block the sound. Then get in the tub."
"What about you?" Senior asked.
"Someone has to make sure the front door stays closed."
There was horror in Senior's eyes. "Junior…"
"Go, Dad. I'll be fine."
"Family disagreements later," said the Brit. He had his ear to the door, listening. "I just heard someone bash the stair exit door. Won't be long"
Already? They were on the fifth floor. How could they have gotten up here so fast? He looked back to Senior. "Go."
Senior hesitated for a split second before listening to Tony. Tali's cries lessened in volume as Senior entered the bedroom, then the bathroom. They cut down further still as Senior closed the door, and cut out entirely a moment later. Towels under the door.
"Bedroom, Sarah," the Brit said to the woman.
"I'm in better shape than you," said Sarah. "I should hold the door."
"Ah, but I got the mass." The man tapped his belly.
The woman frowned, then nodded and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Military experience, Tony realized. This couple had been soldiers at one point. Probably for a long time.
But that didn't matter; he had to make sure this front door stayed shut. Problem was, he had no weapon. Which left him only one option.
He sat down in front of the door. He weighed a little over two hundred and ten. Not his peak, but still probably a little over where he needed to be. Moving two hundred pounds wasn't hard for a soldier, but it wasn't easy, either. His weight would have to do.
More gunfire from outside. More gunfire from inside. He heard screams this time. Too many screams.
The Brit sat down next to him, taking up more than half the door's width. "What's your name, Yank?"
"Tony."
"Italian, eh? I'm Marshall. Wish we met under better circumstances."
"Same here, Marshall."
They said nothing after that. No need to. They were doing what they had to. They were doing it for their families. And they were doing it together. As the UK and the US so often did. That was enough.
A few moments passed. Then, over the screaming and the gunfire, Tony heard it.
Heavy boots on expensive flooring. Many of them. Moving closer. Closer. Closer. Ever closer. Almost in tune with the gunfire and the screaming. Like they were near-soundless wraiths come to claim the lives of all who dared look upon them.
The boots got louder and louder, then stopped right in front of the door. He pictured the group of gunmen right outside the door, their supernatural sight seeing straight through the wood and right into the back of his head. In their hands were rifles, shotguns, and a battering ram, ready to break down the door in a shower of splintered wood and bullets.
Tony's heart thudded in his chest. He didn't dare move a muscle. Didn't dare blink. Didn't dare breathe. Any sound—of any kind—could endanger his daughter. He couldn't allow that. He would not let her be harmed. If that meant being shot in the back, so be it.
The crash nearly stopped his heart. The sound of breaking wood and heavy boots moving again came so suddenly, so completely without warning, that it took Tony a moment to realize he was still sitting against the door. Unharmed.
The gunmen had entered Tony's room—across the hall.
And his gut told him he needed to see why.
As quietly as a ghost, Tony moved his weight off the door. Marshall immediately glared at him, eyes screaming, "What the hell are you doing?"
Tony brought a finger to his lips, and slowly rose up onto his feet. Then he rose up to the door viewer, mentally counting the seconds.
Two gunmen were across the hall, positioned at either side of Tony's hotel room door. Ski masks hid their faces, and they wore dark civilian clothing. The AKs in their hands had foregrips attached, along with quick-swap magazines—one magazine loaded in the weapon, with the other attached to the side. They looked like the stereotypical terrorists.
But the way they guarded the door was Western in its style. One knee on the ground, AK sights up in front of their dominant eye. Scanning either side of the hallway slowly. Sweeping their weapon back and forth. Back and forth. It didn't fit with typical terrorists. Especially terrorist groups the size of this one. They went for numbers, not quality. Definitely not both.
Their actions didn't fit with their projected image.
Tony's attention went to the room. Other gunmen were inside. At first, they were clearing it for threats—again with a style and professionalism that was more typical of high-quality militaries than extremist groups—then they were destroying everything within the room. Cushions. Pillows. Furniture. Tali's toys. Even the paintings and the TV. All were quickly torn or taken apart by the gunmen.
Tony's gut had been saying he was the target of this assault since he saw the gunmen. Now he had proof. The gunmen were searching for something—something they wanted badly enough to mount a full-scale assault on a civilian target just to get to him. But what did they want, and why did they think he had it?
One of the gunmen stopped in the middle of the room and put two fingers against his ear. He stood like that for a few seconds, then lowered his hand and said something in Arabic, or a dialect of Arabic, that Tony didn't catch with all the gunfire outside and inside the hotel. Immediately, all the gunmen in the room moved out into the hallway, falling into set positions. Last to leave was the one who gave the order. When he formed up with the rest, the gunmen moved in the direction of the stairs, quickly disappearing from view.
In and out in less than sixty seconds, Tony thought, stopping his mental clock. Way too fast for terrorists. Another action that didn't fit.
He didn't move until the sound of the gunmen's boots faded. When he did, he realized the gunfire had stopped. Totally and completely. Like every single gunmen had run out of ammo at the exact same time.
"What were you thinking?" Marshall growled, voice barely a whisper. "You could have gotten their attention!"
Tony ignored the Brit and quietly went to the window. He moved to the side of the blinds and slowly, ever so slowly, pushed them back just enough for Tony to give one of his eyes a view of the street below.
The gunmen were leaving. Quickly. Some vehicles had already leaving by the time Tony looked out the window. The rest lasted only another couple minutes before the gunmen climbed in and sped off, leaving the streets deathly still and silent.
Professional in executing a mission and extracting themselves from it. Just who the hell were they? What had they been looking for? Why did they leave so quickly?
The answer to that last one came a few minutes later. An armored convoy was rolling up the road, headed by a pair of Namer APCS—perhaps the most survivable armored vehicle in the world. One was mounted with a M2 Browning Machine Guns on its remote weapons station, while the other had an MK19 Grenade Launcher.
"Have they left?" Marshall asked.
"Yeah," Tony said. "Yeah, they're gone. Calvary's incoming."
"'Bout time. Was beginning to think the Israelis were getting slow."
Tony checked his phone. Perfect signal. Gunmen must have had a jammer. He had three missed calls from Gibbs.
Have to wait another minute, Boss, he thought. He walked to the bedroom door and knocked softly. Sarah answered. "My family?"
"Bathroom's there," she said, pointing at a closed door at the other side of the room and to the left.
"Thanks." He went to the bathroom door. Now that he was closer, he could hear Tali's faint crying on the other side, through the wood. The father in him immediately felt terrible in not drying her tears; the agent in him was relieved she was safe. He knocked on the door. "Dad, they're gone. Open up."
It took all of two seconds for Senior to swing the door open and start crushing him in a one-armed hug, Tali wiggling in his other arm. Her cries were nearly deafening. "I'm so glad you're safe, Junior."
Tony returned the hug. "Me, too, Dad. Give her here."
Senior did, and immediately his daughter went to break his neck with her little arms, stuffed lion Gibbs held in one hand. And oh, her sobs. They broke his heart. He had to be the worst father ever. "It's okay. It's okay. Abba's here…"
Just another minute, Boss, he thought as Tali kept bawling. Tali comes first.
"I'll call back with transportation details in thirty," Gibbs finished. He ended the call and stood up from his desk, giving the eager McGee and Bishop his attention. "They're okay."
"Good," said McGee, looking visibly relieved. "Where are they now?"
"The security teams from Mossad escorted them to our embassy. They're sitting in the Ambassador's personal safe room right now. Marines are guarding the door."
"We getting them out of the country?" Bishop asked.
"Director's working on something." Gibbs looked to the screen betwen McGee's desk and the one that used to be Tony's. They had the news on, and it was talking about the attack on the hotel. Current count had ninety-six dead and nearly two hundred wounded men, women, and children. The numbers were expected to go up.
Not a single gunmen—no, a single monster, for only a monster could open fire on children—had been seen since the attack, now nearly two hours ago. Not one. Too professional for terrorists. Too professional for most soldiers. His gut said that made them elite mercenaries, or worse, corrupt members of an elite military unit.
His eye twitched at the thought. "Where are we with former Mossad Officer Levi?"
"Hasn't been or heard from since he left after meeting with Director Elbaz," McGee said. "Mossad and Israeli Police are still searching for any trace of him."
"Bishop."
"Levi turned his phone off less than ten minutes after he met with Elbaz," Bishop said. "But, I was able to call in another favor, and I got this." She tapped the keys on her computer, and the screen behind Gibbs displayed a series of phone contacts, all listed in Hebrew. Bishop entered another command, and the text converted to English. She highlighted one listed as an unknown number, and a single text came up.
Target's in room 514. No time to take it quietly. You are cleared for a full assault.
Levi ordered the attack. Gibbs fought back the instinctive fury he felt whenever he saw a soldier bring shame to their uniform—or in this case, their agency.
"He turned his phone off right after sending this message," Bishop went on. "After that, he drops off the grid."
"Anyone in the NSA making him a priority?" Gibbs asked.
"My contacts say his name's floating around the building. I called in another favor to have let me know if they find anything."
Gibbs looked to McGee.
"We don't have access yet, but Levi's bank accounts and credit cards have been frozen by Mossad," Tim said. "YAMAM also raided his house. Clean, other than his Mossad ID lying on the kitchen table. They also found a two-foot wide, square hole in the floor. It was empty, but something had been there before."
Go-bag, Gibbs thought. Every officer, agent, and spy had one. Gibbs had one, both at home and during his assignments overseas. Levi's probably contained cash, passports, and probably a firearm. Everything he would need to disappear.
It made him angry. The attack. Levi. Having nothing to work with. All of it. He hated seeing innocents fall victim to evil he couldn't prevent. He hated traitors. He hated being unable to pursue a suspect. He hated feeling behind.
His eye twitched, gut telling him he was missing something. He needed coffee.
"Why did he do this?"
His team didn't answer.
He turned around to look at them. "Why did he order an attack? Why target DiNozzo? How does it relate to Ziva?"
"Maybe he's a terrorist mole?" Bishop offered. "ISIS has made a lot of money in illegal oil and kidnapping. Maybe they thought going after a former federal agent and his family would bring in a big ransom."
"Doesn't fit Ziva into the equation. What else?"
"Same as Bishop," said McGee. "But replacing ISIS with the remnants of Saleem Ulman's group. We never managed to take out all of his followers, and Saleem trained his men to never forgive or forget an insult. They know Tony was there when Saleem died."
"Saleem's organization fell apart without his leadership. The few that still believed in his cause went to Al-Qaeda. What else?"
Bishop and McGee were silent.
Gibbs' eye twitched. "Come on! You're NCIS Agents. Think." Gibbs pointed to the text on the screen behind him. "How does Noam Levi fit into what we know? How does he have his own private strike force without anyone knowing about it?!"
They had no answers.
And neither did Gibbs' gut.
Noam Levi was sweating. It was hard not to in the Israeli heat, but this time, he was not sweating from the temperature.
He was sweating because he was afraid.
The operation ended in failure. The target was not found. The objective went unsecured. He had failed. He not only failed, but used resources he should not have used while doing so. That would have consequences, if he was not careful.
Noam reached down to his belt and grabbed the bottled water there. The cool liquid soothed his throat, but did little for his nerves. Subtly, he checked his surroundings for suspicious vehicles or persons for the third time in ten minutes. Nothing unusual. No one was following him. That would earn him a little grace.
He continued down the street, keeping his head high and walk brisk but unworried. He was in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Sha'anan—a neighborhood now known mostly for its high population of foreign workers and asylum seekers. Here, Noam was far more likely to be seen as a foreigner than an Israeli.
That was why he had set up his safe house in the area.
Noam reached the near-abandoned building where he had an set up his safe house. He looked up and down the street, saw no one, and took out the key to get into the lobby. Or, what had been a lobby at one point. It had no staff, no furniture, and more than eight out of every ten apartment doors he saw led to vacant homes. Still, the owner was alive, and stopped by once a month to collect from the few renters. He wouldn't be getting a visit; he bought his apartment.
He walked up the stairs, each step creaking as if his foot would snap it in two at any moment. He went up six floors, went down a hallway, and another after it, then came to his apartment—well out of the way and forgotten. The way a safe house should have been.
Noam took out another key and inserted it into the lock. It struggled against him for a moment, disuse and age causing it to be hard to turn, but it gave under his persistence. He opened the door and stepped inside.
Then he froze.
A group of men were in his safe house. Well-built, bearded men who were of several races and varied in age from several years Levi's junior to more than a decade his senior. All wore clothing that was far too expensive for this town, and all were looking at him with hard, intense eyes that spoke of danger and long histories of violence.
But the man who grabbed Noam's attention was the only one not looking at him.
Sitting in at the small table near the apartment's living room window, staring out at the city skyline in the distance, was a light-skinned man in a pitch black suit worth more than anything Levi had ever owned. The man's short, snow white hair spoke of advanced age, but his powerful build and six-eight frame spoke of physical strength few could best. A very unique, very old, golden Rolex was visible on his right wrist.
It was him, Noam thought. Death itself. How had he even gotten to Israel so quickly?
"Were you planning on running from your problem, Operative Levi?" It was the suited man who spoke, and he spoke Hebrew like it was his first language.
"Yes," Levi said. It was better to be honest than to lie to him. At least when the truth would not get him killed outright. Noam knew that. He would find out if you lied. Then things would get infinitely more messy.
"Why were you running?"
"Because I failed you today."
"Today? You haven't failed today. You've done so much more than that." Even without changing the tone of his deep, clear voice, the man in the suit managed to convey his rage through the words. It made the hair on the back of Noam's neck stand on end "For six years, I give you $9,000 every week for any information you decide to give me, important or otherwise. Then, just once, I give you a task outside information: find and eliminate Ziva David. You are a trained Mossad Agent, at the peak of your physical abilities. Yet you failed at my task months ago, and you've kept failing at it every single day since. Then, at long last, you find an inkling of hope to redeem yourself, but instead of seizing the opportunity, you hijack a very carefully organized Task Force to fix your mistakes, and compromise it. Now, you've created a headache for me. No, you haven't failed, Operative Levi—you've exhausted my patience."
Levi felt cold fear stab his heart, but he pushed through it. "Sir, if I may defend myself."
"You have one minute."
Noam took a breath, then laid out the last-ditch, desperate lie he'd crafted, "Sir, it was Operative James. It was his idea to use the Task Force on the hotel. He'd been eager to see the chaos it could cause. I told him that wasn't why you put it together, but he… He convinced me sacrificing the Task Force was worth it for securing the Package. I regret not contacting you about his ambitions."
"I see. And will Operative James lie to me about his abuse of power?"
"I believe so, sir."
The man in the suit snapped a finger, and one of the other men stepped forward with a phone in his hand. He gave it to the man in the suit, then stepped away. "Then why, Operative Levi, did he send me a message last night about your laziness?"
Levi froze.
"My favorite part is where he says he planned on detaining you in the morning. Strange, he never did. I wonder, though—what will I find, should I dig up that fresh patch of ground two miles east of the city?"
Noam knew then it was over. He knew Noam had killed James that morning when he arrived to detain him. He knew everything was Noam's doing. All his failure.
Levi should have known better to try and lie.
"That is what I thought." The man stood, buttoning his suit jacket. "Goodbye, Operative Levi."
Levi felt the cold steel of a silenced handgun tap the side of his head.
Then there was nothing.
There you have it. Another chapter down. A supposed player in the game now dead. A new one taking their place. I can't say I'm completely happy with how this one turned out, especially the ending scene, but I hope you all still enjoyed. If not, please point where I could have done better.
So thank you all for reading, and please remember to comment on anything that catches your attention; reviews are quite useful in creating inspiration.
See you soon.