Author's Notes

Okay, I wanted to create a Ziva that was both strong and vulnerable, primarily because while independent, she is emotionally shaken because of her own actions. As for Karim, she will end up interacting with him for most of the story, and he is pretty much devoted to the cause and rather intelligent.

And as for the sometimes lengthy gaps, I think that it serves to help me stay behind the series - what that means is I can adjust my plans for the story's future, so if a character is, say alive in season 13, I can't kill him in this story as it's still season 11. Actually, this is the big issue for writing fanfics based on still-running shows, but for say, a show like The Simpsons, it runs on primarily negative continuity so for the most part, what happens in one episode won't affect another, so a fanfic wouldn't be substantially changed by new episodes. Regardless, the fact that NCIS is such a long runner makes writing a fanfic that adheres perfectly to its continuity is a bit difficult - Teen Titans is easier because the show is long over, so anything goes.

For the new characters this chapter (characters from the NCIS OSP office), Kensi = Kensi Byle, Nell = Nell Jones, Hetty = Operations Manager Henrietta Lange, and Granger = Deputy Director Owen Granger. The others (Callen, Sam, Deeks, and Eric) will eventually appear much later on in the story.

And as for a reference of time, this chapter takes place in the middle of February 2014, which would be after the NCIS episode "Bulletproof" and also before the NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Tuhon", so Kensi is still in Afghanistan and yet to encounter the White Ghost. At least, this is according to my interpretation of the show's timeline.

Now, let's continue the story.

Foof. Ziva stares at Karim and the Vizier wide-eyed in confusion.

In Afghanistan, Kensi is currently watching Agent Savatino for the upteenth time in the past few weeks, suspecting that he was the "White Ghost" she had been assigned to terminate. Eyeing him from her binoculars, she found he was on a routine patrol.

While it seemed like a waste, she needed to know just what was routine for him so she would know what to expect for something non-ordinary, i.e. if he is meeting with his Taliban associates. For the past three months, she had been residing in Afghanistan following an abrupt reassignment there from Los Angeles, and just after she and fellow team member LAPD Liasion Marty Deeks had tried to get a balance in order with their blossoming relationship. Once she got him, her assignment was finished and she could return to OSP.

Continuing to watch him, she heard her handler calling for her on the comm-link. Kensi answered, "Blye."

On the other end of the line was Granger, who said, "What do you see out there?"

Kensi explained, "Nothing much. Just Savatino. No White Ghost."

"When you're done with your patrol, return back to base."

"Roger that." Almost immediately, Kensi prepared to pack up and return to base. However, as she turned away from Savatino, she noticed someone heading close to the vicinity. Suspecting it may in fact be a Taliban operative and is there to meet Savatino, Kensi went to prone and pulled out her sniper rifle, a customized DPMS TAC20, sighting the operative in her scope.

However, despite her hopes, Savatino was nowhere near the man, meaning that he may have been meeting someone else.

After walking around for a few seconds, the man then proceeded to walk away from the scene. However, Kensi was able to grab facial recording of the man's face. Who the hell was that guy?

Now, she'd have to get it back to Camp Chapman and have Eric and Nell identify just who was there, and why he was there. Something told her that he was not a serviceman.

Meanwhile, back stateside, the MCRT team was investigating the death of Eric Marshall, the owner of a gun store who had been illegally dealing guns on the black market, specifically automatic weapons such as the OA-93 assault rifle used to commit a murder.

Taking photos of the corpse, DiNozzo noted, "This is very messy. Looks just like Lance Corporal Prink's body."

Bishop noted, "But these bullets look much bigger than a five fifty six."

Ducky, who was looking at the body, commented, "Indeed, Eleanor, it is. These look more like musket rounds than cartridges. It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that gun manufacturers began to use bullets instead of the custom-made balls. This resulted in much better accuracy and range, so infantrymen could better hit the targets they aimed at. All three rounds hit in varying places. The first two both hit in the abdomen, but the kill shot landed in his superior vena cava. I'd say he's been dead for about five hours."

Palmer then brought up, "Do you think three people shot him or did one person shoot him three times?"

"That, Mr. Palmer, is a question that our capable Miss Sciuto will be able to answer. While I'd believe he was shot with multiple guns, these rounds look much more as if they came from the same gun. Then again, how could that same gun hit in three different places, and wouldn't Mister Marshall be able to put up a fight while his assailant was reloading?"

"That is another question as there are no signs of defensive wounds. It's like he was gunned down by firing squad. But there are no abrasions suggesting he was bound and also nothing that suggested he was running away, and if he was running, it'd be more and more likely that the shooter or shooters wouldn't have hit him. This also meant that perhaps there were a couple of bullets that missed."

Gibbs then walked into the room and said, "It looks like a huge portion of his fence was taken, at least eight planks and in its place was a huge damn piece of wood. Either there were more bullets on the planks or he didn't finish his fence."

McGee came in to explain, "I talked to the neighbors. They weren't at home around the time of the shooting, but they did say that Marshall did have his fence complete, and he also had a sundial, which has gone missing. They also said that he was a bit of a loner, never coming to any of the events around the block and never had any company."

Ducky added, "I do suppose that would have been ideal for him, especially considering that he was a black market arms dealer. If people came over, they might have found much of his merchandise."

Bishop asked, "Then, if there was merchandise here? Where the hell is it?"

Gibbs bluntly stated, "Gone. Killer took it."

"Oh. Hopefully, the ledger can give us any idea of who killed him."

"That's going to be a bit of an issue, Bishop. The vault was opened shortly after Marshall died and the ledger was badly torn up with quite a few pages being removed. The killer must have been covering his tracks. Fortunately, we did acquire the address of the storage facility."

"McGee, take DiNozzo to the facility. Seize all weapons you find. Give me a goddamned name for who sold the weapons to Marshall, the middleman."

Meanwhile, over in Los Angeles, Nell was in the Ops room of the Office of Special Projects analyzing the footage Kensi had sent her. It was late, already after ten at night local time, and the rest of the team had already called a night, even Eric, who had some sort of gathering to go to. Only Hetty and herself were still in the building.

Running the video through facial recognition was going to take a while as it was shot at a considerable distance away, making the image blurry and at a poor angle, almost as if the man knew he was being watched. Even if he didn't know, it was definitely a reasonable expectation that he suspected the direction could have provided a good look at his face, so it was obvious he did not want to be seen.

But what would the man be doing there in the first place if there was a chance of him getting caught? That's it - he was casing the route. If he got caught, then that route would be a no-go, but what was the route for? Smuggling, obviously. And judging by the proximity of Camp Chapman, the man most likely came in from Pakistan as Camp Chapman was only around ten miles away from the Pakistani border.

Then, what would somebody be smuggling from Pakistan to Afghanistan? Oil, iron? No, Afghanistan has enough of those already - it'd be like selling sand to a beach. More likely it'd be grains, textiles, cement, or cutlery. But what about if it was the other way, from Afghanistan to Pakistan? Opium, dates, pomegranates, emeralds, or cotton. Yeah, it was more likely that things were being smuggled into Pakistan, but what was it? And besides, what was being smuggled may not even originate in Afghanistan.

Only by finding out the identity of the individual could give the intelligent intelligence analyst an idea of what was being smuggled, and then she could tell Kensi. But first, she had to de-blur the image and maybe she could find some sort of distinct tell of the person's nationality; while she assumed he was Pakistani, she worked for NCIS - things were always bound to get strange (and complicated), very fast. For example, a recent case started with the investigation into a botched raid on a cartel hideout and then sent the team to investigate an elite high school.

Of course, blurring was not an issue for her as she quickly removed the blur from Kensi's footage, revealing the man - one that was approximately five foot six, one hundred thirty pounds with long black hair and what appeared to be a long black scar across his left arm, which was also missing its pinky. What soon surprised Nell was that the man wasn't Pakistani - he was Japanese. This was where everything turned weird as why would a Japanese man be smuggling into Pakistan?

The scar was a good place to look, and immediately she delved into the Japanese Criminal Records to see if there was a man with a long black scar ever admitted into a Japanese prison.

By eleven at night, she had found twenty-seven men with long black scars that had been admitted into Japanese prisons, of those twenty had the scar on their left arm. Then, nine of those men were still alive, and then just three men had a missing pinky on their left hand. Cross checking the estimated height and weight to the three left only one person fitting the criteria.

Nell said to herself, "Ichirou Makimoto." That man was the very man Kensi saw - a thirty-nine year old originating from Kyoto, Makimoto had already developed a reputation as a smuggler, being arrested four times for drug trafficking in the country (and escaping all four times). In that prison time, Makimoto had his pinky cut off in an accident while the lengthy black scar came from when he accidentally dissatisfied a client and got assaulted with a katana. Makimoto was lucky that just his arm got struck and not his chest, and then had the scar dyed black for some unknown reason.

Now, she had to tell Kensi, but then again, Hetty was also there and was basically omnipotent - regardless of what happened, Hetty would find out Nell went behind her back one way or another, so it was probably better that Nell told Hetty first about Makimoto to hopefully minimize the potential fallout - she did not want to risk Hetty discovering her snooping behind her back again, such as when she was looking into a man Callen had been investigating three years back.

So, armed with the information, she walked down to Hetty's office, intending to tell Hetty the news first before she found out by other means. Finding Hetty wasn't there, Nell then moved to the dressing room, where Hetty was working on a dress, which was clearly for someone taller than the two of them.

Nell asked, "So, who's the dress for?"

Hetty responded, "It's for Natalie Portman to wear at the Academy Awards."

"You do Oscar dresses?"

"Of course I do. This is the third one I've done this season - I've already done Naomi Watts and Jane Fonda. I've been in the costume design business for decades, my dear. So, what brings you down here, my dear?"

Nell began, "Kensi acquired footage of an unknown man passing by Camp Chapman and she asked me to identify him."

"Did you get a match?"

"Yes. Ichirou Makimoto, a known Japanese smuggler. From what this means, it looks like he's trying to smuggle something from Afghanistan into Pakistan."

"Inform Agent Blye. I will contact Director Granger about this, and the two will investigate Mister Makimoto. By the way, why did you decide to share this information with me before Blye?"

"I didn't want you to find out later. I thought it'd be better if it came from my mouth, than you discovering it."

Back over on the East Coast, DiNozzo and McGee arrived at the suspected storage facility Marshall was using to buy his black market merchandise. It was a small rental facility with only two storage units, which thereby made it easier for him to do his trades and keeping the guns out of view of suspicious customers.

Getting out of the car, DiNozzo said, "I'm sure ATF is going to have a field day when they see just what Marshall has in his unit."

McGee noted, "If there's anything left. Somebody went through his stuff and got the address and removed several pages from the ledger. Obviously they don't want any evidence that links them to Marshall, so we may be too late."

Strolling up to the facility, DiNozzo realized, "Maybe not necessarily" as he saw three men unloading crates from Marshall's unit. Pulling out their SIG-Sauer pistols, the two ran up to behind a fallen piece of concrete to examine who was present. They saw the men were each armed with a Remington R5, which while not the same weapon that Marshall used to kill Lance Corporal Prink, still indicated that they were well-armed.

DiNozzo nodded to McGee and the junior of the two field agents yelled, "NCIS! Don't move!" The immediate reaction of the three was to open fire on the duo with their automatics. Fortunately, they were hidden behind concrete, but they didn't have their bulletproof vests on. That was a major mistake and Gibbs was bound to chew them out for that once they returned. After a couple of seconds, they heard the distinct sound of guns clicking empty, as automatics burn through ammunition faster than fire burns through paper.

With that, DiNozzo and McGee returned fire. DiNozzo's first five rounds landed in the chest of one of the shooters, killing him, while McGee got one round into another shooter's shoulder and foot, incapacitating them for the time being, leaving just one shooter to go.

As DiNozzo moved up, McGee made sure to cover him if the third person opened fire with his R5, which by now had been reloaded and ready for fire. Once he spotted DiNozzo, the third man opened fire on him, quickly forcing him to run for cover or else have his body shredded with bullets.

McGee opened fire with his SIG-Sauer, hoping to force the shooter to back off, but it did little as the third must have been in cover, or wearing body armor. Indeed, that proved to be true as the third shooter was wearing full-on body armor, and his R5 had a Beta-C magazine, which meant he had a lot more than thirty rounds to dispense. And based on what else he could see, the shooter had at least one more R5 ready to go, so he had over a hundred rounds ready to fire at them.

With a blaze of automatic fire, McGee and DiNozzo were forced to stay behind cover, unable to even fire a shot without risking being torn apart by automatic fire. And even if they could, their 9mm rounds would not even do much more than stun him. They needed something a lot stronger to pierce his body armor.

DiNozzo then had an idea and began running across the side of the building the shooter couldn't see. The shooter at that moment had no idea of what DiNozzo was trying, so his attention was focused on McGee and gunning him down.

Reaching the other side of the storage facility, DiNozzo quickly ducked into one of the open doors, hoping to find a better weapon to take down the shooter. However, as soon as he entered the facility, the shooter opened fire on the other side, trying to hit DiNozzo, which left McGee an opening to open fire on the third shooter from the rear.

That didn't do much better than firing at his front, as every part of his body was clad in armor, even his head and legs. Still, that gave DiNozzo time to search the storage facility for any high-caliber weapons. There were plenty of OA-93s (which was presumably what they were loading), but he needed something better than a 5.56mm round to get through that insane body armor. And then, they had to get the wounded suspect before he was killed or got away.

Suddenly, the armored shooter ran out of ammunition for his first R5 and then grabbed his other one to resume fire on the two federal agents. Before he could fire a shot, several new gunshots rang out, piercing the gunman's body armor. The gunman slumped against the wall, obviously wounded at least, before collapsing and dying.

McGee ran up to the storage facility to grab the only survivor that was still alive as DiNozzo came out, holding a Barrett M107 sniper rifle. The senior field agent noted, "It's amazing what people store in their storage facilities."

Returning with their injured suspect to NCIS (as well as having the two deceased brought to the morgue for Ducky to examine), DiNozzo and McGee watched as Gibbs began to interrogate the suspect.

In observation, DiNozzo asked, "Who were those guys? Why were they there?"

Then, Bishop came into the observation room and held three folders, explaining, "Abby got prints on the three shooters. The first shooter was Esteban Rojas, a Brazilian immigrant and hired gun. Metro suspects him to be involved in two unsolved robberies, one of which resulted in a fatality. The second shooter, the armored one, is Kim Sung-Li, a South Korean with ties to the Korean mob and mercenary for hire. The man in interrogation is Yusef al-Furlani, an immigrant from Syria. He has no criminal record, but Metro does suspect him to be an arms dealer."

McGee continued, "Just like Marshall."

Meanwhile, in the interrogation room, Gibbs asked al-Furlani, "So, why were you at the storage facility stealing guns?"

al-Furlani chuckled, "I wasn't stealing guns. I was loading crates onto a truck."

"Filled with guns."

"What makes you so certain about that, Agent...?"

"Gibbs. The man whose storage unit you robbed was an arms dealer with a massive supply of illegal guns. Okay then, why were you loading crates onto a truck?"

"It was a job. Some guy hired me to help him load crates from a storage facility into his truck. He said that the owner died and now he was the owner of all the crates."

"Did this guy have a name, or a face?"

"He called me over the phone. Offered me $1,000 in cash to help him move the crates."

"Is that why you were armed with a machine gun?"

"He said that it could get dangerous, so he gave us weapons."

"Dangerous against federal agents? So, you shot at my people?"

"We panicked." Gibbs kept a slight chuckle as he clearly knew al-Furlani was lying and withholding information about what he was actually doing there.

And behind the glass, Bishop asked, "They were armed with assault rifles, but why were they stealing crates filled with OA-93s? They had better firepower than what they were taking."

McGee surmised, "Maybe the OA-93s are for the people they stole it for. They're compact automatics, which means they are much easier hidden. Perfect for sneak attacks."

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, Kensi was checking her e-mail to see if Nell had any results on the man she saw outside of the base. As she began pulling up Nell's message, Granger came up to her and explained, "The man you saw, his name is Ichirou Makimoto, a Japanese smuggler who was arrested four times for drug trafficking in Japan."

Kensi asked the Assistant Director, "How did you know?"

"Henrietta told me. Nell told her so as to avoid her wrath if she told you first and thereby going behind her back."

"Makes sense. So, are we going to investigate?"

"We move out in five. What we need to figure out is where the deal will go down. Makimoto was walking by Camp Chapman, which meant he was scouting for a route for the trade."

Before Kensi could ask again, Granger was gone. As such, she grabbed her sniper rifle and proceeded to head out towards transportation. Now, she had absolutely no clue what was about to happen next. Would they have luck and find Makimoto with crates full of smuggled goods, or would they be on a wild goose chase?

Thinking about what Granger had said about him being arrested multiple times in Japan meant that Makimoto was on the lam, and he would only surface if he was scouting a route for a very lucrative trade. The cargo must be extremely valuable and likely hard to move. That's where Camp Chapman would come in - with airplanes coming in and out of the base, they might be able to place the goods onboard and have them sent towards the States.

As she hopped into a Humvee, Granger walked over with a map of the region and a red marker. Circling where Kensi was on patrol yesterday, Granger explained, "This is where you spotted Makimoto, less than ten miles from the Pakistani border." Circling the location of the camp, he continued, "They are obviously trying to avoid detection, so they won't go within a two mile radius of the base."

"That still leaves a lot of ground to cover, and who says that Makimoto's new associates are even coming from Pakistan?"

"Do we have any major footholds in Pakistan? Anyway, there are undeniably groups in northern Pakistan that would need to move things in and out of their location, and around here would be their best bet to do so. Makimoto wouldn't be here if he was smuggling for the Afghanis."

"Then, how would they even get their goods here? It's literally hundreds of miles, if not even more, from the next closest airport, and even with a vehicle, they wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to the border without being detected."

"You said it yourself, Blye. The next closest airport is hundreds of miles away. Their contraband is coming from airplanes arriving here. So, then they likely will have twelve miles or so to go to get from here to return to Pakistan." Drawing a red line from the circle surrounding the base to the border, Granger continued, "This will be their route to move the goods. Two C-130 cargo planes landed less than half an hour ago, which means the smugglers have their contraband already. Going on horseback, it will take them around an hour to get from base to the border. If we move now, we'll intercept Makimoto and his contraband."

As Granger hopped into the driver's seat, Kensi asked, "So, are we going alone?"

"I've been speaking with several Afghani Border Police and they'll provide limited support. Now, let's go." Closing the door and buckling his seatbelt, Granger turned the keys and the Humvee took off towards the intended location of the interception.

Within twenty minutes, they had reached the likely route taken by the smugglers for the intercept. Unfortunately, the smugglers were so close they began opening fire on the Humvee. Kensi and Granger immediately got out of the Humvee to dodge their fire. Grabbing her sniper rifle, Kensi looked at the smugglers. They had around fifty men, armed with AK-type rifles as well as two Type 69 RPG launchers and a DShK machine gun mounted on a wagon, which incidentally was the same wagon with the cargo.

Opening fire with her TAC20, Kensi took out two smugglers before being forced back behind the cover of the Humvee. Granger grabbed an M4A1 stored in the Humvee, racking the action before taking aim at the machine gunner. Two clean shots from the Assistant Director put him down for the count.

However, they were still outgunned and severely outnumbered. Their only chance now laid with the ABP to arrive and force the smugglers to surrender.

"How long until support gets here?"

"A few minutes." Just after he said that, an RPG flew towards the Humvee, missing the vehicle by mere inches. Kensi responded, "I'm not sure we'll last that long! Fifty people just for one cargo crate. Whatever it is, it better be important!"

With that, Kensi resumed opening fire on the smugglers, thinning their numbers a bit before being forced back behind cover. There were still over thirty hostiles remaining and not enough ammunition to hold them off.

Granger spotted a hostile trying to aim an RPG at them, so he put several bullets in the man's chest, causing him to drop the RPG, just as it fired, quickly killing several of the hostiles. That helped thin the numbers, but it was still a rough fight ahead of them. The Border Police needed to get here soon.

Continuing to open fire and dropping the hostiles, Kensi soon found herself forced to reload. She only had one magazine left, which was twenty rounds, and she doubted Granger had much more than that.

Fortunately, the Afghani Border Patrol soon came on horseback, opening fire with their own AK rifles, gunning down several more of the hostiles. As they turned around, the twenty or so remaining smugglers saw close to two dozen fresh reinforcements coming right at them, forcing them on a mad run towards the border, which quickly put them in the sights of Kensi and Granger.

Cornered, the smugglers surrendered and were promptly taken into custody by the Afghan Border Police, with the exception of Makimoto, who was taken in by Granger and Kensi for interrogation.

After all the smugglers were detained, Kensi and Granger walked over to the crate, intent on finding out just what they caught the smugglers bringing in. Carefully sliding the box off of the wagon, Kensi walked back towards the Humvee to grab a crowbar so they could open the crate.

Tossing the object to Granger, the Assistant Director opened the box. Kensi asked, "What is it?"

Granger pulled out an OA-93 and replied, "Agent Blye, they were bringing weapons into Pakistan."

"Then why did they even need the AKs if they were already getting more weapons?"

Removing the magazine from the gun, Granger revealed, "They didn't have the ammo with them. I doubt they even knew what they were bringing in. Now, we'll see if Makimoto is cooperative enough to tell us about the smuggling."

Back at the Navy Yard, Gibbs had finished interrogating Yusef al-Furlani, who didn't offer anything particularly useful about who hired him to steal the guns, nor why they were carrying assault rifles that were much better than the guns they were stealing in the first place. But the big thing was that all three of the thieves were of different ethnicities - a Muslim, a Brazilian, and a Korean. Normally, when criminals associate, they go with people of their own ethnicity - Latinos recruit Latinos, blacks recruit blacks, etc. But what person would recruit three different races, and what was their connection?

Hopefully Abby had an answer for him. Walking into Abby's lab, Gibbs asked his typical question, "Whatdya got Abs?"

Abby began, "Well, Gibbs. McGee and I have been running links for any known commonalities between the three gunmen. All three were called from the same payphone in Irvington, Virginia, each about four minutes after the last. Each call lasted just ten seconds, which isn't a lot of time."

"A signal."

"Yeah, but unfortunately, the cameras around the payphone were down for maintenance, so we can't get facial recognition, and the phone was wiped down, so no fingerprints either. Whoever hired them was incredibly clever."

"Do you have any idea as to what killed Marshall?"

Pulling up pictures of the bullets, Abby explained, "Ducky was right that these were musket balls, and man are these big ones. Each bullet has diameter of point eight inches, which explains the massive damage in Marshall's body. I can tell you that these bullets were fired from the same weapon, but how many muskets use 0.8" rounds?"

"Not many. Do you have an ID on the murder weapon?"

"No, Gibbs, I don't. The gun had to have been custom-made to fire that kind of bullet, so unless you can find me an example of the type of weapon, you're out of luck."

"Well, how about any links between the gunmen and Marshall?"

"None there either. None of them knew Marshall on any level. The calls sent to the three gunmen came about three hours after Marshall's death. One thing that has got me confused is, why did Marshall live on an island but kept his contraband on the mainland?"

"The greater the distance, the lower the suspicion, Abs."

"Alright, and one more thing. Each of the three gunmen had the same tattoo, all on the back of their left shoulder. It's a red flame emerging over a blue line with another white flame underneath the blue line all encased in a brown circle. I know my tats, but what this means, I'm not even sure."

Meanwhile, over in Pakistan, where Ziva was presently undercover as Netali, she was waking up from her sleep. It had been one of her better sleeps in some time, especially considering that a month ago, she was an alcoholic who was more likely to pass out than honestly sleep.

Getting out of her bed, she slipped out of her brown tank top and shorts and replaced them with a light black short-sleeve shirt and a long pair of white shorts that went down below her knees, clothing which she was given by Karim. What she was surprised by was that it fit her, which meant some rather uncomfortable implications were evident with how he determined her size.

Exiting her small room, she went out in search of Karim, who told her to meet him near one of the storage closets. As she approached the closet, she quickly heard Karim and the Vizier in discussion.

"وقد تم ضبط شحنة لدينا من أسلحة قبل أن تتمكن من الحصول على هنا." Apparently, a shipment of weapons they were supposed to get had been seized.

"وبطبيعة الحال كان. أنا لا ينبغي أبدا أن يثق المهرب الياباني." Now, the Vizier was berating himself for trusting a Japanese smuggler, who likely was supposed to be getting the guns to them.

"والأسوأ من ذلك، كان هؤلاء الوكلاء البحرية التي أوقفت شحنة." And another point for NCIS for being the ones responsible for stopping the shipment. He continued, "ووجدوا أيضا عن مورد لدينا في الولايات المتحدة. اللعنة له من أجل الحصول على الاهتمام جلب على نفسه لقتل هذا البحرية في المقام الأول!" Their American arms dealer had gotten NCIS attention by killing a Marine. Ziva gave an unnoticed smile as she heard how NCIS was sabotaging the cell's operations.

"فقد عاشت اكثر فائدة له. هو قد أعطى بالفعل لنا السلاح" Now, she was getting a little worried, now that the Vizier mentioned that they had the weapon, which meant God knows what.

"كم من الوقت حتى نستعملها؟" Now, they planned on use this weapon, but the only question was when. The Vizier then responded, في الوقت المناسب، وكريم. مرة واحدة وقد فعلت" صانع القنابل عملها بالنسبة لنا، وسوف يكون لحظتنا في الإضراب." "Netali" instantly knew that she was going to be a part of a major plan, but the only question was, what was their intention? Staring wide eyed in confusion, Ziva could only hope she was not noticed by Karim or the Vizier.

Shortly afterwards, the Vizier and Karim split ways, with Ziva taking note of what seemed to be a tattoo on the back of the Vizier's left shoulder, which looked like some sort of red flame.

Foof.

Okay, I know this chapter may have left you with a few questions, but they will all be answered in due time (say in a few chapters or so), when things become revealed as to the cell's plan and Ziva's intended role in it.

Please remember to review.