Chapter Three

She had never heard such a sound before. Feral, that was how she would describe it later on, when life was no longer seconds away from turning into death.

She had seen Tony fall and knew where the ground stopped and became a cliff, plunging at a ninety degree angle down into black waters. Her heart nearly stopped as he disappeared.

“Tony!” she yelled, although she knew it would not help.

She ran down the hill, by the side of the water; her pace was only slightly faster than the river’s. It looked cold and black like the sky above them. She saw Tony come up for air, and for a moment there was relief.

“ZIVA!” she heard him scream, his voice filled with fear. It made Ziva’s blood run cold. Then he disappeared beneath the surface once more and she ran even faster.

When she was ahead of Tony – she could see his back every now and then, his head bobbing up, lifeless – Ziva jumped in. The water felt like ice, but she did not care. Her training had forced her to face worse challenges than this – but never had the life of a friend depended so much on her when she had been training.

She swam against the current, legs kicking strongly. Here and there, she could feel the ground beneath her feet, and she used it to kick forward. But mostly she suspected that Tony was moving towards her, rather than she towards him.

She caught hold of his jacket, pulling him up to the surface. The moonlight made him look like a ghost and his head lolled to the side, unconscious. His lips were blue; he wasn’t breathing.

“Come on, Tony,” she said, pulling him along as she tried to get back to the shore.

There, the police officers were waiting, and they helped her get him out of the water.

“CPR, now!” she said between labored breaths, coughing when a splash of cold water entered her mouth. “Call—ambulance!”

When she got out, two of the policemen dragging her by her arms, the others were already doing heart compressions and breathing air into Tony’s lifeless body. She sat on her knees, the icy wind make her clothes even colder, but nothing made her soul freeze as the sight of her friend, her best friend, laying completely motionless on the ground.

He coughed suddenly, and the female officer who had given him mouth to mouth helped him turn on his side. Water escaped his mouth as he gagged in a wet, horrid cough. His wheezing breathing as he tried to get enough air back into his lungs made her realize with sudden clarity that even though he was breathing now, he was far from out of the woods.

“Did you—catch—?”

Tony’s words were mere hisses on painful breaths.

“Do not worry about that now,” Ziva said, crawling up beside him. “And if you say you are fine now, I will slap you.”

“Only Gibbs,” Tony wheezed.

“Yes, but I will make an exception,” Ziva said, his cold hand between hers.

“Was only out—night swim—you know,” Tony said.

“Shh,” Ziva said.

“You know, this is—like in the movie—Titanic,” Tony said, his teeth clattering and his voice barely carrying, each word interrupted by his shaking body, “when R-Rose and Jack—and she’s on the d-door—and he’s so cold—”

Despite it all, a dry laugh, heavy with choked back tears that she would never, ever allow to fall, escaped her.

A helicopter located them, although by that time, Ziva was shivering so badly she could no longer speak. Tony had fallen silent, which worried her more than she wanted to admit, but she could not see him; one of the police officers had taken the place by Ziva’s side, trying to keep her warm with body heat. Two of the others were doing the same with Tony, she knew. They had peeled the wet clothes off both her and Tony – he had made some barely audible joke about his state of undress that they could not quite make out because his teeth had clattered so badly – and placed dry clothes on them, wrapping them up in every blanket they could find. Even so, the cold of the night seemed to make it impossible to get warm.

The medical personnel aboard the helicopter placed Tony on a gurney with more blankets and warm bottles of water at his sides. A few minutes later, she got the same treatment. The blanket, which was warm to the touch, was tucked tightly around her. It felt like it scalded her frozen skin.

She let her head fall to the side and saw them place an IV in Tony, and a mask over his face. She heard them talk about oxygen levels and wet sounds in his lungs.

“Plague,” she said, and the medical personnel looked at her with wide eyes. “He had—the Plague.”

They nodded, and her work was done, for now.

Soon enough, the warmth of the water bottles and the warming blanket began to get to her, and she was told to rest. For once in her life, she did just that; she closed her eyes and allowed someone else to take charge.

“Jethro, please – they won’t be quicker because you wear a hole in their floor.”

Gibbs stopped pacing for a moment, but then continued. The need to move around was incredible, as though a single second standing still would mean—something. He didn’t know what, didn’t want to think about what.

His mouth was dry, his heart speeding in his chest. The call had come half an hour earlier – two of his agents were being transported to Bethesda after falling into one of the rivers in the Black Ridge Woods National Park.

Tony had needed CPR.

Ducky watched him with worry, but Gibbs pointedly ignored it. Ducky ought to know the guilt he felt, and when Gibbs felt responsible, he could not simply ignore it.

“I shouldn’t have let him go, Duck,” Gibbs said, fresh blame crashing over him like a tidal wave.

“You couldn’t have known—”

“He wasn’t fine,” Gibbs said. “He had a cold, and you know him and colds – they don’t mix.”

“I assumed he did – he didn’t seem quite as alert when I last saw him,” Ducky said. “But he simply refused to admit anything. And with his lungs—”

“He’s already cheated death on enough occasions to last a lifetime,” Gibbs said. “I shouldn’t have let him go. I know better.”

“You know that Tony is a very strong-willed young man, Jethro,” Ducky said, standing up and placing a hand on Gibb’s arm. “He wouldn’t have accepted if you sent Ziva or Timothy in his place.”

“I’m his boss,” Gibbs said. “If I’d been serious, he’d’ve been forced to listen to me.”

“And then he would have run off into danger in some other place,” Ducky said. “Tony doesn’t want to feel useless, least of all to you. If you’d stopped him from going to the national park, he’d have found something else to do – and I can assure you, it wouldn’t have been staying at home in bed.”

“I challenged him to go,” Gibbs said.

Ducky sighed. “He wouldn’t have listened, Jethro.”

He sat down once more, probably knowing that when Gibbs didn’t want to listen, he didn’t. The feeling of guilt was at least a familiar feeling – guilt about a coworker, an employee, a team member. He should have kept Tony away from danger, away from cold rivers in the middle of the night. Tony shouldn’t have been in the woods to begin with. Ziva could have handled it with the local police, or he could have sent McGee with her, and Tony could have been resting at home.

He kept pacing.

It would be another hour and a half before the helicopter reached Bethesda and its cargo was loaded off, still on gurneys. Ziva, who had fallen asleep on the ride over despite the noise, looked around groggily when they landed. To her right, she saw Tony, eyes closed, a mask over his face and the IV-drip in his arm, lying beneath a heap of blankets just as she was.

She heard the words hypothermia and possible pneumonia and a wave of fear passed through her. She had not been around when Tony caught the Plague, but she knew that his lungs had been scarred from it, and she could only imagine the kind of pressure pneumonia would put on those lungs.

They wheeled her into a room where she was hooked up to machines. She tried to tell the nurse that she was feeling pretty good, but the nurse shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter, you’re staying here overnight for observation,” the nurse said. “You’ll probably be discharged in the morning, though.”

“What about Tony?”

“The man who was brought in with you?” the nurse asked. “He’s in the ICU, but I really can’t tell you more.”

“I saved his life,” Ziva said, with as much annoyance as she could muster. “I need to know. He is my partner.”

She looked indecisive. “He’s stable at the moment, but we need to get his temperature up. There’s some fluid in his lungs and we fear he will develop pneumonia. Apparently his lungs aren’t in the best condition—”

“He had the Plague a few years ago,” Ziva said quietly.

“The Plague?” the nurse said, eyes wide.

Ziva simply nodded, unwilling to continue. She allowed her eyelids to fall shut long enough for the nurse to leave. Then she lay staring into the darkness, her eyes burning despite her inability to cry. It had been a long time since she cried.

There were monitors everywhere, noting everything Tony’s body did. There was the blood pressure and the oxygen levels, the steady beep of his heartbeat. Doctors and nurses passed Gibbs, spoke to him, had him nod and sign the papers, because Gibbs was Tony’s medical proxy.

All the while, Gibbs simply stared at the motionless form of his most energetic agent. It seemed so unnatural for him to be so still. It was not the first time Gibbs had seen him this way, but it always seemed wrong. Tony had already been lucky – with the Y. Pestis, but also with getting shot at and getting abducted and every other kind of danger Tony had been in – and Gibbs couldn’t help but fear that his luck would now be running out.

His heart constricted at the thought.

Tony was covered from neck to toe in an electric blanket, which was warm to the touch, and a cap on his head. They needed to get his temperature up, they told Gibbs, and he nodded. They said he might develop pneumonia, and that Dr. Brad Pitt had been called in as a specialist on Tony’s damaged lungs. There had been water in those lungs; Tony had breathed in water while in the river.

Gibbs didn’t know what to do with himself. His earlier pacing had been replaced by slumping into the chair at Tony’s bedside, even though a marine never slumped. The guilt weighed him down, resting heavily on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have sent Tony out into the woods, not when he knew that Tony was unwell.

“Did he have a cold before?” the doctor had asked him and Gibbs had nodded. “Well, that explains why he is in such a bad shape now. Running out in the icy woods isn’t exactly the healthiest thing to do for any person with a cold, least of all one with his lungs.”

It seemed as though even if Tony had not taken a midnight swim in the river, he might still have needed hospital care, simply because Gibbs had sent him out into the national park.

Layers upon layers of self-loathing descended upon him.

The only other people he could also blame for sending Tony into the woods were Mrs. Annie Reed and Mr. Jason Rosenberg. She had made the call, she had begged for help, and he was probably the man she had been afraid of – they were responsible for the case they had to begin with.

He would find them.

“We normally do an X-ray, but with the considerable damage the plague did to his lungs it would be misleading,” the doctor said. “We did a chest CT instead and I’m afraid things aren’t looking too good for Agent DiNozzo. The blood work shows an elevated white blood cell count, which indicates an infection, especially with the fever he’s experiencing. I’m afraid he’s developing pneumonia.”

Gibbs hands clenched together, nails digging into the palm of his hand.

“What are his chances?” he asked, his voice calmer than he really felt.

“It depends on the kind of pneumonia,” the doctor said. “We’re hoping it’s a bacterial pneumonia, the most common of which is the Streptococcus pneumoniae, and we’ve started him on antibiotics. We’re also giving him extra oxygen.”

“Intubated?” Ducky asked.

“Not yet,” the doctor replied, “but we may have to. I won’t lie to you, Doctor Mallard – he is in a very bad shape.”

Ducky nodded. “Is he conscious?”

“On and off,” said the doctor. “We’ll be moving him to a clean room to avoid any more stress to his system, and you’ll be required to follow the cleaning procedures we have if you want to visit him. You will be allowed to stay with him, if you are declared healthy and given, of course, that you don’t upset him.”

Ducky nodded and took Gibbs, who stared beyond the doctor at Tony, laying still on the hospital bed, pale as the sheets he was surrounded by, by the arm. The doctor left them, hurrying off to other patients.

The nurses came a few minutes later and moved Tony to the clean room. He looked worse with every second that passed, Gibbs thought – now his skin was shining with sweat and there was a blue tint to it.

“Jethro, what do you want to do?”

Ducky looked at him, and Gibbs wondered the same thing himself. What did he want to do? He wanted to find Reed and make her pay for what she had done to Tony. At the same time, he didn’t want to leave the hospital, did not want to leave Tony’s side. What if he—

Ducky’s face was sympathetic. “I understand that this is difficult.”

“He’s already been through this once, Duck,” Gibbs said.

“I know,” Ducky said. “But you have to have faith in him. Anthony is one the most stubborn people I’ve ever met – aside from you. If anyone can beat this, it’s him.”

Gibbs knew Ducky was trying to make him feel better, but he wanted to snap at him anyway. He wanted to blame someone, to get back, to hurt someone as much as they had hurt Tony.

And at once, Gibbs knew that he could not stay at the hospital.

“Don’t leave him,” he said to Ducky, who nodded with a kind, soft smile.

Gibbs strode towards the door, a man with a mission.

Ziva had received Gibbs’ message about half an hour before she was finally discharged, after arguing with the doctor and signing a paper that she did so against the doctor’s recommendations. She felt fine. She hardly ever got sick, but she distinctly remembered the feeling of fever, even though it had been nearly a decade since she had last had it. She did not have a fever now.

She strode into the bullpen, knowing that although she did not feel sick, she must look like crap, because she had hardly slept all night, worry about Tony filling her mind. Every time a nurse or doctor came into her room, she feared that they would tell her that Tony had passed away, that she had not been fast enough.

When she turned the corner to her desk, Ziva was suddenly enveloped in a hug. She caught a glimpse of black hair in ponytails.

“Abby, I am fine,” she said.

Abby looked as distressed as she always was when someone on Gibbs’ team was in danger. She moved around even more than she usually did, hands flying this way and that, and Ziva had to remind herself not to snap at the girl, who could seem so very young at times. Ziva herself had never understood the point of panicking the way Abby did.

“Are you? Are you sure?” Abby asked. “Because Gibbs told me that you saved Tony from the river and I know that the water is really cold at this time of the year and you could’ve gone into shock and Tony, he’s—they think he has pneumonia, do you know how bad that is with his lungs, oh God, I have to get over there, I mean, I was going, but then Gibbs told me that he needed me here—”

Ziva took Abby’s hands in her own. “Abby. Calm down.”

She knew that Abby would see her as cold and unfeeling once again, but she was used to other people having that image of her and it was something she lived with, rarely giving it a second thought. It was simply her way of coping. Abby needed to calm down to be of any use to them.

“Ziva,” McGee said, “you okay?”

Abby had blocked her view of McGee’s desk, but now he stood beside her, brow wrinkled with worry.

Ziva smiled slightly. “I am fine. I’m not the one we should be worrying about.”

McGee’s face fell at the thought of Tony. Ziva knew that as awful as it was for her, this was at least the first time she lived through it – for the rest of the team, this was the second time Tony was in the hospital with a life-threatening illness.

Abby turned to McGee and hugged him. He held on, and Ziva watched with the smallest of smiles.

Gibbs came down the stairs, carrying a coffee in his hand. His face was set in a grim expression, and only little hints – like lines of worry creasing his face – told Ziva that he too was afraid for Tony. She wondered if he felt as guilty as she did – she had known that Tony had a cold even though he refused to admit it, and Gibbs must have realized it too. Tony should not have been out in the national park with her.

“We’re going to catch the bastards who did this to Tony,” Gibbs said. “We’re not stopping until they’re in custody, or on the tables down in autopsy.”

“But are both bad?” Abby asked. “I mean, Reed called Tony—”

“All I know is that someone was shooting at us,” Ziva said. “I guess the first shot was aimed at Tony, and I don’t know how close it was, but the shots fired when we were running were not fired by a first-time shooter. Officer Johnson took one bullet in his vest – if he hadn’t been wearing it, he would have been killed.”

“Get that vest in here,” Gibbs said. “Abby, analyze the bullet so that we can match it to Reed’s or Rosenberg’s gun when we find them.”

“Annie Reed has no record of ever owning or training with a gun,” McGee said, having returned to his computer. “She could’ve bought a gun illegally, but she would still’ve had to train somewhere to be that good a shot.”

“What about Rosenberg?” Gibbs asked.

“No military training,” McGee said, looking through the records of Jason Rosenberg. “This guy hasn’t done much at all.”

Abby frowned at this. She cocked her head to the side. “You know, that’s what I thought when I was looking at his profile. There wasn’t much to him. Just his school records, driver’s license and dentals, and pretty much nothing else.”

She motioned for McGee to move, and he did.

“He has several aliases,” Abby said. “Most of them, like his Jake Davis identity, are pretty badly executed – if the bank had really looked, they could probably have busted him on it. But there’s one identity – Marcus Williams – which is a lot more detailed, with dentals and all that too. It has a whole different set of schools, and if I remember correctly—”

She trailed off, and then, after a few clicks, a record came up on the big screen.

“Marcus Williams is a trained military sniper, who quit five years ago and disappeared off the radar,” Abby said.

“Why would anyone create a fake identity with that kind of information,” McGee said, “unless it’s not actually the real identity, while the Rosenberg one is a fake?”

“So Rosenberg, Williams, whatever, and Reed are working together?” Abby asked.

“Tony said that she sounded scared,” McGee said, “and that she was asking for help. Rosenberg/Williams might have kidnapped her.”

“She must have known that we could trace the call,” Ziva said.

“Tony said they got disconnected,” McGee said. “She might’ve said more if it hadn’t been.”

Gibbs looked at the picture of Rosenberg/Williams. “He’s out there, with her in one way or another.”

“Are we going back out?” Ziva asked.

“I am,” Gibbs said. “You’re staying here – I’m not making the same mistake twice.”

She realized then that he did feel guilty about Tony, just as she did. He had just admitted that sending Tony out into the national park had been a grave mistake.

“How are you going to find them?” McGee asked.

“She wants to be found,” Gibbs said. “She must have left a trace.”

“He might have realized, though,” McGee said.

Gibbs did not respond, but stared at the image of Rosenberg/Williams. Ziva wondered what it would be like to have Gibbs stare at her that way – she suspected it would feel rather like looking into the eyes of her own death. Gibbs had been angry at times with her, and with the other members of the team, but he was never furious at them in this murderous way. She wondered if it was because it was Tony – because she had always had the feeling that he was a bit special to Gibbs – or if he would react the same way no matter who it was.

“Give me the location of where DiNozzo fell into the river,” Gibbs said. “I’ll start there.”

“Boss, I want to come with you.” Ziva was surprised to hear McGee say the words, but then again no, she wasn’t – McGee would do almost anything to protect the team, just as the others would.

“Me too,” Ziva said.

She wasn’t sick, and with every second that passed grew the urge to find the people responsible for putting Tony in the hospital. She wanted to blame someone, anyone, but herself.

Gibbs regarded her silently, gauging how healthy she was, and then gave a short nod.

The three headed towards the door.

Ducky sat beside him when he woke up. Tony sat in a swirl of colors, demons playing next to him, and when Ducky spoke, his voice was distorted.

“My boy,” Tony heard, but then Ducky’s mouth kept moving and Tony’s brain could not make out the words.

He was cold, oh so cold, and he shivered with it. His body felt like it was made of lead, and suddenly, he was back under water, struggling to get back to the surface, a losing battle when his body weighed tons. He fought against the currents, swirling around him, taunting him, stealing his breath and his air and he could not breathe.

“Fever,” he heard, perhaps a familiar voice, perhaps not, he could not decide.

He hurt, his chest and his arms and his legs and his head. There were spikes being pushed through his body with every breath he took, the angry hot pokers that seared his soul.

This was not life, this was death, coming to claim him. He could not get air into his lungs; there was nothing left for him.

Faces danced before his eyes, Ziva’s arms reaching for him, not long enough, not strong enough, and he was pulled down again, further and further into a black hole. He saw Gibbs, and he asked if he was okay, and Tony tried to reply, tried to say that no, no, he wasn’t, he was drowning, could he not see that? The figures, his friends, his loved ones, looked down at him as the black hole pulled him down, pulled him closer to death, and Gibbs simply smiled at him, that smile that he hardly ever gave anyone other than Abby, that smile that Tony longed for—

Tony gasped for air, but none came into his lungs, and then he knew no more.

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