And so I return to give an update. Again, apologies. Slow writer, and all.

Again, thanks go to everyone who favorited, reviewed, or followed since last update. I sincerely appreciate all the feedback I get, and I hope you all stick around; things are starting to get interesting.

Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.

Even as Tony heard the clang and felt the plane shake like a giant hand had grabbed it, he knew there was nothing he could do.

All the running, shouting, demands, and all knowledge of planes in the world wouldn't do a thing to help. He was not the pilot. He could not control the aircraft. He could not determine what had gone wrong. He could not adapt to the new situation. Hell, he couldn't even stand up without falling over.

That didn't make it easier to see his suddenly-awake daughter cry again for the second time in the same day.

Tony felt the plane start banking to the right. He knew that wasn't good, that there was no reason why the pilot would turn, but he also knew there was nothing he could do but hold his daughter close, keep an eye on Senior, and hold on.

He saw Dan speaking into a headset. Tony didn't need to be on the line to know he was asking the rest of the crew what was happening. Whatever he got in response, it made Dan pale.

Another great clang rang out. This time, Tony could identify the source: the right wing. Something had broken. Something important. The plane banked further to the right. Dangerously so. The shaking became even more frighteningly violent. He gripped Tali tighter.

Then, suddenly, the shaking stopped. The plane leveled. Dan regained some color.

They were safe.

A smaller clang came from the wing.

Or not.

Dan moved away from his station and moved to Tony. When he was standing front of him, using the wall to keep his balance, he leaned down to Tony's ear and shouted, "Our starboard wing is compromised. Engines 1 and 2 are out. Pilot thinks we can still get to base, but it'll be a rough landing."

Did he say the wing had almost come off? How did that even happen? "Understood," he shouted back. "How long 'til we land?"

"ETA was 10 minutes before the wing became compromised. Pilot's stretching it to 15." Dan moved back to his station.

"What did he say?" Senior asked, voice just barely audible to Tony even as he shouted. Senior had never been good at the whole yelling thing. Just the frown of disappointment. And the casual dismissals.

"We're gonna land soon. It won't be as smooth as they hoped."

"What about the shaking and that sound we heard?"

"Turbulence."

Senior got the idea and leaned back into his seat.

Tony knew Senior didn't believe it was just turbulence, but no good could come of telling him the truth with Tali glued to his side. His daughter was panicked, and rightly so. She needed Tony and Senior to be calm and act like nothing was wrong. So that's what they would do.

The wing periodically made more concerning noise as the pilot continued on their flightpath. For Tali's sake, he did his best to seem unconcerned. To look totally relaxed even as his mind raced. How many times was the wing going to snap or clang or grind, before it gave way? How long would they have to live if that happened? Ten seconds, a minute? How could he pretend everything was okay, when at any moment, his daughter could be living the last seconds of her too-young life?

It wouldn't be fair.

After what seemed an eternity, Tony felt the C-130 start to lose altitude. Not in a dive, but in a controlled descent. They were coming in for their landing. They were going to be oka—

The sound of the wing tearing off the plane's fuselage stopped Tony's heart.

The C-130 was sent almost 45° to the right and rolled to its side—the change in weight and aerodynamics causing the two left engines to turn the entire craft. Tony's stomach did a flip when it did, his back crashing against the wall behind him, his momentum trying to send him in the direction the plane had just been flying.

Tali cried out when her tiny body almost slipped out of her seat. Tony held her as tightly as he could, hoping—praying—his strength would be enough to keep her safe.

The plane hit the runway on its side, the terrible and agonizing sound of metal skidding along asphalt drowning out all other noise. The impact rattled Tony's teeth and sent him slamming against the restraints in front of him.

He lost his hold on Tali.

She let out a scream lost in the deafening sound of grinding metal, and fell into space. Tony grabbed one of her little hands just before she got out of reach. His aim was off, and he ended up with a hand on the sleeve of her long shirt. She looked up at him, screaming, crying. Begging to be saved. Begging to be in his arms.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

Tony forced his mind to put aside parental panic and focused. He reached out with his other arm and strengthened his grip, grabbing her hand this time instead of her shirt. Then he pulled her up to his chest and wrapped her in his arms. Her new safety harness.

Gravity changed again as the plane righted itself. Tony grimaced through the pain as he once again slammed into wall of the fueslage. He felt—and heard—the plane's remaining wing start digging into the runway, the asphalt tearing it apart. However, the wing also acted as a break.

Slowly but surely, the plane slowed until at last it ground to a halt. Destroyed and useless, but with its fueslage intact.

And more importantly, Tali was safe. Crying, but safe.

Tony held her a little tighter. "You hurt, Senior?"

Senior was silent.

Tony looked to his father as Dan stumbled in their direction. His head had blood on it, and he wasn't moving. "Dad?"

No response. Not even a groan.

"Dad!"

Jamie waited.

He was good at waiting; he'd done a lot of it in his life. Waiting for his mom to pick him up from football practice. Waiting for his dad to come home. Waiting for the Marines to do more than treat him as a number.

Waiting for his marks to arrive at the traps he set with his team.

Jamie sometimes felt shame for his chosen side profession. But if he didn't do it, someone else would. There wasn't a shortage of people who wanted other people dead, and there wasn't a shortage of people qualified to pull the trigger. Besides, most of the time the people he killed weren't so nice themselves. Rival mobsters, hitmen, dealers.

Today was a mystery target. They'd been given a picture, a flight number, and the destination of that flight. No name or reason or instruction beyond leaving no witnesses.

He always liked how to-the-point Death's representative were.

His burner phone buzzed. He looked at it.

Target moving your way. ETA 2 min.

"That them?"

Jamie bit back the sigh he immediately wanted to give. "No one else has these numbers, T."

"Well… Right. Nevermind," Terrence—or T, for short—said, blue eyes and youthful tanned face smiling. He was the newest member of the group, assigned to Jamie for evaluation by their leader, Caine. His youth made him eager and lightning-fast with the trigger, but impatient and inexperienced.

Jamie didn't like him. He didn't like him at all.

Jamie kept waiting, mentally counting down the two minutes Caine said.

Six seconds past two minutes, Jamie saw the Target come into view. They were far away, but Jamie had memorized the photo they'd been given. That was their Target.

"Is that our mark?" Terrence asked. Then he pulled out something that made Jamie groan.

The Target's photo.

"You did not bring that with you, kid," Jamie said.

"What?" Terrence asked. "I'm bad with faces."

"And what happens if you're caught with that? Think a cop will just shrug off someone having his shooting victim's picture on them?"

"So I just won't get caught."

Jamie sighed. He was going to have to talk to Caine when this was over; Terrence wasn't going to work out.

The Target moved from one side of the windshield to the other. Trailing them from a distance, Jamie saw Caine and Russell move into view. Jamie's phone buzzed again.

Move in.

"Alright, kid. When we get out of the car, don't run. Walk. Walk calmly, as if you and I are meeting up with friends at that cafe across the street. People see fast movement. Act casual, and most people never even notice you."

"Got it."

"Let's go."

Jamie got out of the car first, then Terrence followed. Then they went to join Caine and Russell. Surprisingly, Terrence listened to Jamie's instructions and walked at the same, slow pace as Jamie. Maybe there was a bit of hope for the kid.

They met up with Caine and Russell just as the Target took an unexpected turn into an alleyway. "Think we're compromised, C?" Jamie asked Caine.

"No," said Caine, his serious eyes matched perfectly by his thick black beard. "Target hasn't looked back once."

"That alley might be a good place to do it," said Russell, his green eyes commonly mistaken for friendly instead of their actual ice-cold. "Concealed. Away from the street. Not a lot of foot traffic."

"Good enough. Let's do it."

They rounded the corner the Target just went around.

Only the Target was nowhere in sight.

Something was wrong about this.

Caine took out his silenced Glock 19, and the rest of them followed suit. They moved into the alley, weapons up, advancing steadily yet cautiously. Checking their corners, making as little sound as possible, ears straining to hear their quarry.

Terrence suddenly let out a strangled cry and stumbled back a step, clutching his throat. Jamie turned to him, only to feel a bullet from T's weapon hit him in the chest.

Jamie cried out in agony and fell, slamming into the concrete. A series of shots from Caine and Russell answered the first. Each of them hit Terrence in the back with wet, meaty thuds.

Then Caine and Russell both went down with a quick pop, pop as Terrence's weapon was used to deadly effectiveness.

Terrence slumped forward into the alley wall and didn't move. The Target appeared from behind him, holding Terrence's gun. They moved forward and fired two more rounds into Russell and Caine with cold indifference, then turned the weapon once again on Jamie.

Jamie fought through his pain and fired before they did.

One round hit the Target in the right shoulder, sending their shot wide. His second round missed right, and his third hit the Target's abdomen. The Target moved further into the alley and around a corner, leaving Jamie's fourth shot to miss and hit the wall behind where they had stood. They didn't reappear.

Jamie felt faint. He slumped back, lying on his back again, his only keepsake from his Marine days, his Dog Tag, falling out from under his shirt. He tried to get up again, but it was useless. He found himself short of breath, what little breaths he could take painful and provoking coughing and blood.

Jamie laid there, unable to move, for more than five minutes. Then he started to lose consciousness. At first just as his eyelids feeling heavy, then as his vision darkening. His pulse beating like a rapid drum in his ears. He faintly heard sirens approaching.

Then he knew nothing else.

A phone rang in front of the man in the black suit. He answered. "Operative Smith has been retired, sir." The voice on the other side of the line was female, and spoke English. Accent was American.

"Was it conducted cleanly?" The man in the black suit asked.

"The body and weapon have been disposed. No witnesses. No loose ends."

"Proceed to the safehouse."

"Yes, Death."

The man in the black suit hung up and destroyed the phone. Operative Smith's failure was not unexpected, but the man had been given a warning. He had been wise not to try running.

His family would have had to pay in his place for his failure.

What was he to do? The purpose of the hastily-planned operation had not been fulfilled. The objective had not been secured. Anthony DiNozzo was still a problem to erase.

But the man in the black suit no longer had the luxury of surprise. He required an assessment of his options.

Another phone rang. The man answered. "The independent contractors failed, sir." Like the previous Operative, the voice spoke English, but it belonged a male. The accent was also American.

The eye of the man in the black suit twitched. "Have they been disciplined?"

"Unneeded, sir. Three have already expired; the fourth is on their way out."

"Was the Target lost?"

"It is believed wounded and without transport."

"Have you tapped city surveillance?"

"I was awaiting your approval, sir."

"I give it. Find the Target."

"It will be done, Death."

"How is he?"

Tony sighed heavily. "It's not good, Boss. Docs say he's got a hairline skull fracture and a grade IIIb concussion, a few broken ribs, a lung with one of those ribs in it, and a fractured left radius. I don't even know what that is."

Gibbs could hear the anger and worry in Tony's voice. Anger at what happened, and worry that his father might not wake up. With age may have come wisdom, but it came with a body that didn't heal like it used to. "Tali okay?"

Tony sighed even heavier than before. "She's… She's as good as she can be, I guess."

"She's scared."

"Too mild a word for it. She's been hiding under Senior's bed since they brought him in. Refused to come out since."

Gibbs felt a pain in his gut. When fear gripped a child's heart, they sought what made them feel safe. In Tali's case, that safe spot was out of sight and near family. Kelly had once done something similar when Shannon was hurt in a car accident. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine."

Gibbs didn't even need his gut to know Tony was lying. "Talk."

"Not sure what you want me to say, Boss. My dad's in a medical coma. I've been through a terrorist attack and a plane crash in the same day. My daughter has been through them today. I almost lost her. If I hadn't caught her..."

There it was: the thought of what could have gone differently that was weighing Tony down. "Can't think of ifs, DiNozzo."

"How can't I, Boss?"

"What if Shannon hadn't visited an old friend at Pendleton?"

That changed Tony's tone immediately. "Boss, I—"

"Rule #6…"

"Never say you're sorry." Tony was silent for a second, then asked, "What do I do with this?"

Gibbs knew he was talking about the flash drive he found in Tali's toy; Tony had briefed he and Vance about it in MTAC.

Before he could respond, Tim walked around the corner. "Boss—got something."

Gibbs switched gears. "Gotta go. Sit tight until we have a new extraction plan, DiNozzo."

"Boss—"

Gibbs hung up the phone and walked out from behind the staircase. "Whadda got?"

"The woman Ziva talked to." Tim led Gibbs back to the Bullpen. The monitor between Tim's desk and Tony's old one displayed the driver's license of a pale, red-haired woman in her early thirties.

"The Israeli archive got back to us," said Bishop. "Her name was Diana Woods—daughter of Kent and Samantha Woods, a former US diplomat to Israel."

"What's her connection to Ziva?" Gibbs asked.

"It's like we thought," Tim said. "Woods and Ziva went to the same school as children. Same age, same class."

"Until the school closed."

"Right," said Bishop. "Once that happened, Diana's parents transferred back to the US to treat her bone tumors. She had a pretty normal life until after she graduated high school, then she went to MIT and became a white hat hacker."

"A what?"

"A computer hacker who uses their skills for good, or what they perceive as good," said McGee. "Woods went a step further and operated as an independent security contractor. Companies hire her to test the security of their computer systems. Or, at least they had—until she dropped off the grid six months ago."

Six months? She died two months ago. Where was she the other four? "Anyone report her missing in that time?"

"Yes," Bishop said. "A neighbor, five months ago, here in DC. They filed a report with Metro."

Gibbs didn't need to hear anymore. He moved to his desk and retrieved his badge and sidearm. "You got an address?"

"I just put it in my phone, Boss," McGee said as he and Bishop followed suit and got their own gear.

"Let's go take a look."

"Wherever you're going, change your plans."

Gibbs paused and looked to the second floor. Vance was standing there, hands on the railing in front of him, face serious. "Just got a call, Gibbs. Shooting in Fairfax. Three dead, one critically wounded Marine on their way to the hospital."

Gibbs' eye twitched. Of all times for this to happen, now was about the worst. But, a case was a case, and if a Marine was involved in a shooting, he had a duty to put it on his radar. "Address."

"Already sent to Agent McGee."

Tim's phone beeped just then. "Got it, Boss."

Gibbs turned to the elevator. "Then change of plans. Call Ducky. Tell he and Palmer to meet us there."

The scene was a mess.

Gibbs was standing in an alley that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the 90s. Dirt, oil, vomit, and other unmentionables were everywhere. A horrible, gag-inducing smell of alcohol, urine, and blood filled the air like a blanket.

Two bodies were in the middle of the alley, each double-tapped to the torso and shot once in the head. Their blood had pooled around them, soaking both their clothes and the alley ground. The other body was off to the side and slumped face-first against a wall, back riddled with bullets. A third blood stain had another handgun but no accompanying body. Where their wounded Marine had laid before being taken by EMS.

Gibbs tore his gaze away from the road, where Bishop and McGee were taking statements from the two witnesses, and looked to Ducky. "Whadda got, Duck?"

"Three dead men, Jethro," Ducky said, adjusting his hat. "Three dead men who, if I might be so brash, were unlikely to be found in honest business."

Gibbs had long thought the same. None of the bodies had ID or wallets on them. Just burner phones, Glock 19 Handguns with suppressors, and a spare clip of 9×19mm Parabellum. The equipment of a hit team. Only this time, their target fought back, and with their own weapons; the man against the wall was missing his Glock.

Problem was, the Marine had been part of the squad. Which meant whoever they'd been after was good enough to take down four armed attackers.

His gut said there was something to that.

"Cause of death?" Gibbs asked.

"Well, I believe it is safe to say these men did not die a natural death." Ducky looked at the gunshot wounds to one of the bodies. "However, Mr. Palmer and I will need to conduct autopsies to determine which gunshot proved fatal to who."

"They see it coming?"

"You know, it's funny you should ask that," Palmer said, crouched in front of the body slumped against the wall.

"Funny?"

Palmer withered under the look Gibbs gave him. "Well, you know, because this guy here probably never even knew what hit him. He got shot nine times, Gibbs. All to the back. His lights would've been out almost instantly."

Gibbs looked to Palmer's right, where the wall the body rested against fell back a few feet. There was a shallow indent there, just large enough for a person to hide behind without being immediately seen. If someone took more than half a second to look, whoever hid there would have been spotted, but if the searcher was sloppy, high on adrenaline—then it became an ideal location for a surprise attack.

"He went down first," Gibbs said, pointing to the man against the wall.

"How can you tell?"

Gibbs moved to the indent in the wall and stood in it. "From where he'd been standing, he wouldn't have seen me." He moved back out into the open, then made a motion as if he was taking an attacker's weapon. "Which made him vulnerable."

"And let the killer take his weapon." Palmer looked to the other bodies and the Marine's blood stain, then back to the man against the wall. "In trying to take out the shooter, his buddies put most of these bullets in him."

He would've been used as a shield, Gibbs thought, visualizing the event. The shooter takes the weapon of one attacker, then uses his body to shield them from the other three while they take them down one by one by one. Each with two shots in the kill zone and one to the head. They had been skilled. Very skilled.

His gut said that was an exceedingly important detail.

"I believe we have learned all we can without further examination," Ducky said. "Mr. Palmer—would you be so kind as to prepare that one for transport?"

"Sure thing, Doctor." Palmer carefully slid the man down the rest of the wall. Then he carefully flipped the body onto its back.

When he did, something fell out of the man's jacket. A small, blood-stained photograph. Blank side facing up.

Gibbs picked it up.

Then he froze.

The photo was of a familiar woman with dark hair and intense eyes that spoke volumes of the danger she posed to those who threatened her.

Ziva.

These men had been out to kill Ziva. She had fought back. She had gotten away.

She was in DC.

Someone, though I cannot remember who, said they thought last cliffhanger evil. I said that I believed better ones were still to come. They didn't believe me. Perhaps the rest of you can be fair judges.

Well, so much for a quicker and longer update, huh? I know last chapter I said I hoped that would come to pass, but it did not. I apologize, again, for my inconsistent update schedule. I know quite a few of you have said I do not need to beat myself up over it, but I will still drive myself to get better at consistency.

As the first example of a credit song in this story, I suggest "Ninja Tracks - Spectrum". To me, I find this track to fit with the end of the chapter, specifically the very last lines. It has a sound that reminds me much of Ziva's theme.

Thank you all for reading, and if you enjoyed, please be sure to share or suggest this story to a friend.

See you soon.