A/N: Um… Hi. Err… Sorry.

I know that this particular hiatus has been the longest yet; and I am deeply sorry. Honest.

There are a multitude of reasons why I've been absent for so long; I could list them all, but at this stage I think you'd probably prefer me to get back to the massive cliff I've had you all dangling over for the last six months.

So, with no further ado…

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Chapter 16: Sabotage

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Tony dropped his makeshift hammer and dragged the chair over to the window. He knew it was only a matter of time until one of Ari's men either came to check on him or walked around the back of the house; he had no time to be cautious. The NCIS agent climbed on top of the chair and stuck his head and arms through the narrow space, twisting diagonally to make room for his broad shoulders. The gap was so small that there was no possibility he'd be able to go feet first; Tony knew that he's just have to trust in the swampy soil and his brief parachute training session to avoid further injury.

"This is gonna hurt," he muttered to himself, as with a final wriggle and kick off from the chair he nose-dived through the window, hands outstretched to break his fall.

Unfortunately, that meant dropping the whole weight of his falling body onto his broken finger.

The world greyed out for a moment and by the time it returned, Tony was lying in a heap on the soft earth. He started to sit up; and immediately regretted it. The pain was radiating up his arm, sharp and hot and nauseating. Then he made the mistake of looking at his hand.

The makeshift splint had snapped, leaving the broken digit at a sickening angle. The bone gleamed whitely where it had pierced the skin; blood flowed freely from the wound to mix with the damp soil. The combined smells of blood, sweat and humus overwhelmed Tony's already delicate stomach. By the time he'd finished retching up his meagre meal, he felt bad enough that he'dve almost welcomed a terrorist bullet. His head was pounding, his whole left hand was excruciating, throat raw and his abdominal muscles ached from dry heaving.

"Anthony," he gasped, despite the pain it caused him. "You should have talked to Gibbs."

Painfully, the former cop rolled into a sitting position, keeping his left hand held tight to his body. He used his far healthier right hand to brace himself against the wall as he tried to stand. It was a close call, as the scenery blurred and swirled around him; but after a couple of false starts, he managed to get to his feet.

"Right," he managed, that simple act leaving him panting for breath. "Good job. Now, first things first; cover your tracks." He kicked soil over his footprints and the pool of puke and cautiously picked up one of the boards from the window in his good hand; there was a nail sticking out which he'd been lucky to miss on his way down. In the absence of a knife, Tony knew better than to turn down even the most basic of weapons; and he'd seen what a plank with a nail through it could do to a human body more than once.

As ready as he could get with the meagre resources available, Tony staggered off towards the garage in search of the van… and the bomb.

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"Haswari!" Ari looked around to see the man assigned to the police radio scanner listening intently to his headphones.

"What is it, Khalil?"

"Police. How did they track us here? That should be impossible!"

"Leroy Jethro Gibbs is very good at achieving the impossible," Ari replied with a broad smile. "Which is why I went to the trouble of acquiring Anthony. Take Assan and get the van away before they are able to block all escape routes. Mustafa! Come with me to fetch our guest; it seems we shall be needing him sooner than I anticipated. The rest of you, take up your defensive positions. We must, after all, prepare a warm welcome for our visitors."

Ari and Mustafa made their way into the tiny prison cell… and stopped short as they saw the missing boards allowing golden sunlight to stream across the empty chair, bindings still attached to it.

Mustafa cursed in Arabic. "He got away! How did he get away? He must have had help…"

"Clearly, Special Agent DiNozzo is more resourceful than we gave him credit for," drawled Ari with a smirk. "And you, my friend, are either an idiot or a traitor."

"I am no traitor, Haswari!" Mustafa protested vehemently. "I tied him so tight he could barely move!"

"Obviously, he managed it; or he would still be sitting there." Still smiling, Ari produced a gun and shot him point blank in the chest.

The terrorist stared back at his murderer with mute incomprehension, even as he lay bleeding on the damp concrete floor. Ari knelt beside him - and snapped his ally's smallest sinister proximal phalanx as casually as he had his enemy's.

"Unfortunately, I have no time to deal with traitors; and even less for fools, Mustafa," Haswari told him coolly, getting back to his feet. "But perhaps in death, you may still serve some use. After all, by the time Gibbs has proved that your charred remains are not Anthony's, I shall be a very long way away with my very own nuclear weapon. Oh… and do give Doctor Mallard my regards."

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Tony leant his battered body against the whitewashed wall of the garage while the world stopped spinning. He knew that the reason for this whole series of catastrophes lay behind the simple, but securely locked wooden door beside him. And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was not going to let everything he'd suffered in the past few months be for nothing. The loss of his home, job, and surrogate family, Fiver and the other Sigmas; all for a crate in the back of a van. It had to end; had to be over, whether Tony himself survived or not.

So he did what no sane escaped prisoner would do.

He knocked.

When the lone terrorist guard opened the door, expecting one of his compatriots, he was met by the full force of Tony's most dangerous smile.

"Honey, I'm home," the NCIS agent quoted; and then swung the plank into the man's throat with all his strength. He fell back, clutching at his neck; Tony followed, closing the door behind him.

The terrorist clawed for the gun he wore at his hip; unable to shout for help even as the NCIS agent raised his makeshift club again and brought it down on his head so hard it splintered on impact. He dropped like a stone, out cold.

Doused in adrenaline, Tony ignored his growing light-headedness, the effects of serious dehydration and the fact that one of his bones was sticking through his skin. He knelt beside the man and frisked him efficiently; taking his gun, spare ammo, hunting knife and a bottle of precious water. And then he noticed that the guy wasn't breathing. He checked at his neck for a pulse; and found nothing. The flesh felt unpleasantly spongy to the touch.

"Guess I hit you too hard the first time," he muttered. "Collapsed windpipe. Ducky's gonna give me a real hard time about that one."

He rinsed out his mouth with the precious water before drinking a little, while taking the time to assess his surroundings, keen blue-gold eyes moving ceaselessly over every detail as he planned his next move.

The garage was a spacious one; as well as the van, there was a rack of tools adorning each wall and a tarp in the corner covering something large but unrecognisable. The narrow horizontal windows allowed shafts of golden sunlight to slice through the room, drawing lines of light on the grubby surface of the old white van.

Tony rebandaged his fingers as best he could with the scraps of dirty gauze that were all that remained of Ari's expert splint, and then scooted across the ground to put the dead terrorist's knife to good use. Working carefully and methodically (and trying not to use his left hand if he could help it), Tony slashed each of the van's tyres until they deflated with a reassuring hiss.

Just you try moving your nuke now, Ari, he thought gleefully. Now, to make sure you don't turn half of Florida into Hiroshima…

Grateful for his long distant time as a rookie traffic cop, Tony broke easily into the old van and used a tyre iron to pry open the crate.

And looked down into a nightmare of tangled wiring, surrounding a child's Mickey Mouse alarm clock. With every tick, the cartoon eyes flicked from side to side as if watching a tennis match. And with every tick, the alarm got closer to going off.

"This reminds me of the beginning of Speed," he muttered to himself. "Wish I was Keanu Reeves. Ah, who am I kidding? At this point, I'd settle for being McGee."

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"Haswari!" Khalil's panicked voice made Ari look up from priming the fuses for the house's self-destruct system. "Assan is dead! The tyres on the van have been slashed; and someone has tampered with the bomb!"

"Is it still operational?"

"The timer is damaged; I do not know if it can be repaired…"

"Then gather the others and fix it! There is not much time; we must blow the house to distract Gibbs. Get all the men into the garage and defend it with your lives. If we cannot reach our intended target, we shall have to settle for destroying our enemies."

"What about the Fed? We cannot allow him to escape…"

"I shall take responsibility for him." Ari gripped his shoulder reassuringly. "Do not concern yourself, Khalil."

"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo will not live to see the sunset," Ari promised.

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Hope you liked it.

I am deeply indebted to all of the wonderful people who have reviewed or messaged me to ask for more of this story. You guys are the reason I'm still writing.

I do actually have about half of the next chapter written already, so there should be another update within the next week or so.

(Mind you, my long awaited nephew is nine days overdue and counting… and I'm doing double overtime at work… and my cat's not well… and I really should clean something soon…)

I'll do my best. Promise.