Dance of Swords 4/?
Title: Dance of Swords, cpt 4
Rating: Teen
Genre: Gen, Drama, Humor
Warnings: No food or drink
Gibbs rubbed the sides of his face before pulling a chair closer to his battered agent. "Okay, McGee, let's go back to when you finished talking to the ambassador. What happened next?
McGee still looked quite bleary-eyed, but pain lines were starting to show on his face. "I went back in and checked with Janice to make sure they were all right and used the excuse of checking with the hotel to double check their rehearsal schedule. Then I tracked down the room the FBI was using."
"That's when they told you..."
"Yeah. The whole thing bothered me, so after I escorted the ladies back to their rooms I took a walk around the hotel. I figured that if there was going to be a problem, I needed to know the layout better."
Any good soldier would do recon in that situation and Gibbs nodded encouragingly. "That sounds like it was a good idea."
McGee started to shrug and thought better of it. "My gut was telling me that something was not right, but nothing seemed out of place. If I'd found anything wrong that night, I would have called you, Boss, but I didn't think complaining that the FBI was mean to me was worth the interruption."
The kid was in no condition for one of his patented headslaps, so Gibbs settled for a neck squeeze. "New rule, you always complain when the FBI is mean, you got that?" While McGee nodded, Fornell just sunk further into his chair.
Satisfied with both reactions, Gibbs pressed on. "When did the trouble actually start?"
"I did another walk through on Saturday morning and..."
Saturday Morning
"Good morning, Tim."
"Morning, Janice, ladies." He hugged the older woman before nodding to the rest of the group. "You guys on your way to the breakfast?"
"Of course, aren't you?"
He glanced down the hallway, seeing a familiar figure move into one of the service corridors. "I'll meet up with you there. Save me a seat, okay?"
"Is everything all right?"
He was already out of earshot as he quietly followed Taran Kemal. Kemal stopped just outside the employee entrance for the kitchen, quietly speaking to another man. He was familiar, and after a moment, Tim remembered seeing his face on the latest terrorist alert. Quietly and carefully he backed away, not alerting them to his presence. Once he was well out of earshot, he pulled out his cell phone only to find he had no signal.
"Damn it." He moved further back into the public area of the hotel, but the signal did no improve. The lobby was becoming quite crowded with women and a few men walking through on their way to the large banquet hall where the opening breakfast was scheduled to be held. Tim wasn't looking forward to another discussion with the FBI agents on site, but this was too important to worry about an inter-agency squabble. He moved to return to the room the FBI was using, and saw Rabia and her troupe on their way to the banquet room.
"Rabia?"
"Timothy, how are you this morning?" She left the group to join him, noticing his worried expression. "Is everything all right?"
"No, it's not." He really didn't want to involve her, but he was quickly running out of options. "Your father was very worried about Taran last night, and... and he was right."
"What do you mean?"
Tim rubbed his forehead, wishing his team was on their way. "He's here with a known terrorist."
"No, you must be mistaken."
"I'm sorry, Rabia, I'm not. It's my job to keep track of known terrorists that may have infiltrated the country. I know what I saw. Now, for some reason I can't get a cell phone signal this morning, so I need to find another way to get word out."
She reached out and grabbed his jacket sleeve. "I'll go with you."
"No, you stay with Fatima and your troupe." He pulled her fingers free of his coat and squeezed her hand. "I promised your father to watch out for you." Without giving her a chance to argue, he walked away, not noticing the rebellious look on her face.
It was a quick trip to retrace his steps from the night before and within a few minutes he was standing in the empty room that should house the FBI team. As angry as he was about it, it wasn't a shock to find the room deserted, no sign of the two agents anywhere. He hated to bother Gibbs on a rare weekend off, but he knew the older man would want to know what was going on, if for no other reason but to rag on Fornell the next time he saw him.
The room the FBI was using was on the third floor of the small hotel, near the door to the upper terrace. Tim decided that would be the next place to try for a signal. He was surprised to find the door locked, but it was still early, perhaps it was locked at night for added security. Deciding that his next course of action was to find an open exit, Tim descended the main staircase, heading for the lobby entrance. He was almost to the second floor when the familiar sound of gunfire sent him diving for cover.
Screaming and shouting could be heard coming from the banquet hall and Tim quickly thought through his options as he remembered the layout of the hotel. If he could loop around he could make it to the kitchen through the service hallway on the north side of the building. With any luck he could get a quick look at the situation in the banquet hall before slipping out the delivery entrance to call for reinforcements. Quietly, he began backing up the stairs, hoping to make it to the secondary stairs before the terrorists began a sweep of the building. He made it to the top of the stairs before he heard the distinctive sound of the slide on a Glock. He froze, then slowly turned, raising his arms as he moved. He kept his arms close to his body as he lifted them. With any luck they wouldn't notice his sidearm under his jacket. His captor was smiling.
"Late for breakfast, I see. It is too bad, it would have been your last meal." He drew down on McGee as Tim tensed, preparing to throw himself to the side as he pulled his weapon. A shadow moved in back of him, and as Tim's eyes widened, Rabia stepped out and hit the gunman across the back of the head with a stone sculpture she'd picked up from a nearby wall niche. He staggered before stepping backwards into air as he missed the step. Tim ran, grabbing and pulling her along with him as he flew around the corner and out of sight.
The sound of a body falling down the stairs attracted attention as he knew it would. Tim held his breath, waiting for them to come upstairs. He heard words he didn't understand, but the voices moved further away instead of closer. He turned to Rabia, hoping for an explanation. She was listening intently, and suddenly relaxed with a shake of her head before she whispered in Tim's ear.
"His neck was broken in the fall. They think he was running back to join them and fell down the stairs on his own. We are very lucky."
It was beyond lucky, but McGee wasn't about to wait around and press that luck any further. Now that the main stair was clear, he pressed his index finger to his lips in the international sign of silence and motioned for her to follow him. The two of them slipped back up the stairs and Tim led them silently to the door leading to the terrace, grateful that his lockpick kit was still in his pocket. He stopped and stared in horror, realizing what the man had been doing up here on this level.
"What is that?" Rabia peered over his shoulder at the black box now attached to the push bar that opened the heavy door. Wires lead out of the top and the bottom, leading to both a large block of C-4 and a glass, powder filled canister mounted on top of the powerful explosive. An antenna on the top suggested that remote detonation was possible and McGee began slowly backing away, forcing her to move back as well.
"Trouble." Destination chosen, Tim started pulling her along with him. "They're going to do a sweep of the building, looking for stragglers. We've got to stay hidden until we can get help." He headed down one of the corridors he had checked out the night before. Near the end, between the elaborate doorways of two large suites, was a narrow door, painted to match the walls. Tim went straight for the narrow door, pushing Rabia through the slim opening in front of him. Once inside, he didn't stop until they were both tucked behind the large housekeeping cart that filled most of the small room. Rabia waited silently as they listened to the gunmen that patrolled the hall, Tim carefully tracking their movement and timing how long it took them to clear each section of the hotel.
Footsteps came close and Tim reached back to take Rabia's hand as the door to their hiding place was opened. His other hand on the butt of his SIG, they both held their breath as the unseen terrorist stood in the doorway and looked around, but the hiding place had been chosen well. Apparently satisfied, the door was closed once again but they didn't relax until the footsteps moved away.
Rabia was the first one to break the silence. "Are you glad I did not listen to you? What do we do now, can you disarm the bomb?"
"From now on, you do listen to me, I'm the one that's trained and it's now my job to keep you safe and to stop whatever they're planning. Until we know more about them, we don't touch the bombs."
"Bombs? I only saw the one. Can't you just pull the wires?"
Tim let his head drop for a second. The Ambassador had been right, his oldest daughter was a handful. "If they bothered with the door that just went out onto a terrace, it's a pretty good guess that all the doors are wired. Besides, that one was set up for some sort of wireless signal. If they're all connected, disarming one could set off the rest."
She stared at him for a long minute before nodding. Tim gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile as he stood up and held out his hand. "Come on, let's go save our friends."
Carefully and thoroughly McGee cleared the top two floors of the hotel. They found two bodies that had been left behind when the terrorists made their sweep through the building, a bellhop and a male guest. Rabia stared at the two bullet riddled bodies. "Why did they kill them?"
He had a pretty good idea why they were dead, but didn't want to alarm her quite yet. "Let's not worry about it right now. We've got to find a way to tip the scales in our favor and call for help." Feeling a little safer, McGee returned to the room the FBI had been using, this time to search a little more carefully. A bank of monitors along one wall were tied into the hotel security cameras and he spent a few minutes studying the activity on the main floor. As he'd suspected after finding the two bodies, the men had been separated from the women and then executed, if the stack of bodies was any indication. The women were huddled together in the middle of the banquet room with a group of armed men standing guard. Taran and another man were standing guard near the front desk while even more roamed the halls. A last group was in the lower level, near the delivery entrance.
Tim began searching through the drawers for anything useful, coming up with several energy bars, an extra clip for a SIG Sauer, and best of all, a satellite phone. He stuffed everything in his pocket and took one last look at the monitors before they headed out the door. The lower level was the weak link, so that's where they'd start.
As they moved through the hotel, Tim and Rabia noted the paths the wandering guards took and the times they passed certain landmarks in the building. The invaders were over-confident, that much was evident as they quickly fell into a routine. It was almost noon before the agent and his companion reached the lower level, but by then McGee could accurately predict where each roving patrol was at any given time.
Tim pulled Rabia into a storage room just past the service elevator. It was filled with furniture and decorations from the last time the hotel was revamped. Once they were in the furthest corner and no longer visible from the door, he broke off half of one of the energy bars and gave to her. She made a face at the first bite, but chewed and swallowed before asking any questions. "What is taking so long and why haven't you used the phone yet?"
He held out the phone and let her see the display. "There's only enough battery left for one call, so we're going to have to make it count and that means an accurate SitRep. I don't know who these guys are, but they're in no hurry, so that tells me they're waiting for something. As soon as Taran goes into the banquet room and discovers you're not in there, it's going to get real bad, real fast. I just hope whoever is on the other end of this phone takes me seriously because I'm not part of their agency."
"Can't you just use it to call your agency?"
"Keyboard's been deactivated and there's just one number programed into the memory. For all I know, it's the local pizza parlor. I'm also worried that the signal might interfere with the wireless signal between the bombs."
"And that would be bad?"
"Oh, yeah." McGee finished half of his part of the energy bar and shoved the rest in his pocket. "If you're ready, let's do this."
She gave him a worried look when he picked up several mirrors from a stack in the corner along with a handful of bedsheets. "What are you doing?"
"It's time for a little sleight of hand." He carefully cleaned the mirrors and started moving them into position, watching the time closely. By the time he was done the mirrors gave a partial image of what appeared to be Rabia hiding in the large, walk-in freezer, under a table and partially hidden by a 'tablecloth', when she was actually posed in a room across the hall and behind a table. Tim partially closed the freezer door and just as the patrol came into that part of the service area he knocked over some canned goods. As expected, the three men came running at the sound and honed in on the freezer door. Standing off to the side, they threw the door open, exposing the mirror and the image of an apparently frightened woman appeared cowering under a table. They smiled at each other as they crept through the door. Once they were in the freezer, Tim came out of his hiding spot and slammed the door shut, trapping them inside. Quickly he slid the lock in place, shoving it hard to wedge it in tight. He turned just in time to catch Rabia as she threw herself at him.
"I cannot believe that worked. You are brilliant, Timothy McGee."
"Three down, a lot more to go. Come on, let's keep going."
Present time
"Wow." Tony grinned and leaned back in his chair. He was still grinning at his Probie, but the newly found pride that was shining in his eyes, was reflected equally in Gibbs' Ziva was also proud of him, but she had a more pressing question.
"If the FBI agents assigned to the hotel were not killed in the takeover, then where were they?"
For her own safety, Jenny had abandoned any attempt to hold any writing implement. "That's a very good question, Agent Fornell. One could possibly believe they had an ulterior motive in abandoning their posts that morning."
Fornell had hoped they'd forgotten about the failure of his men. "We're looking into it, but so far their story checks out."
"And just what story would that be, Tobias?"