<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> List of NCIS episodes </Td> </Tr> <P> The seventh season of the police procedural drama NCIS premiered on September 22, 2009 with NCIS: Los Angeles Season 1 premiering afterwards . At the end of season six, Ziva had left the NCIS team in Israel, returning to work as a Mossad officer . In the closing seconds of that season, Ziva was shown to have been captured and tortured for information about NCIS . </P> <P> In the first episode of season seven, Ziva is rescued by Gibbs, Tony and McGee and upon her return to Washington, she eventually becomes an NCIS agent after resigning from Mossad for good . Much of the season's story arc then focuses on the Mexican Drug War and Colonel Merton Bell (Robert Patrick), a suspected murderer who hired the lawyer M. Allison Hart to represent him . Hart quickly becomes a thorn in Gibbs' side by regularly showing up and protecting possible suspects while they are being investigated, claiming that they were her clients . </P> <P> The season draws to a close as Gibbs is later kidnapped by someone working for Paloma Reynosa, the daughter of the late Pedro Hernandez, a drug dealer Gibbs himself shot dead twenty years previously as Hernandez had been responsible for killing Gibbs' first wife Shannon and daughter Kelly . While Gibbs is held prisoner, Paloma informs him that he would work for her or she would have everyone he ever knew and cared about die if he did not go through with her demands . </P>

When does ziva come back to ncis season 7