10
Hawaii Five-0 and its characters are not mine.
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Danny walked into Steve's office just as Steve was finishing up his phone call. Steve glanced over at his partner while he talked.
"Ye—yes sir. No, absolutely. No, no, no. Thank you, sir."
Danny watched Steve set down the phone and shake his head.
"What's up? Any luck?"
"No. The unit that supported me in North Korea has been redeployed. There's no way that they can escort Jenna to the drop site."
With a sigh, Danny succumbed to the rant he had been planning.
"Okay, listen. I know you. I know you want to put on the cape, and you want to go save the day, but please, keep in mind, please, that this is not a puddle jumper to Lanai. Okay? This is North Korea."
"I'm aware of that. Thank you, Danny."
Steve briefly glanced at Danny before he busied himself packing up his desk. Danny paced the length of the desk a few times, then turned back to Steve and sighed again.
"Okay. What do you want to do?"
Steve stopped packing and looked at Danny like he was an idiot.
"What am I gonna do? I've got to help her. I'd do the same for you, anybody else here, Danny. You know? What am I gonna do?"
Steve quickly grabbed his bag and headed to the door, but he found Danny blocking his way. They stood chest to chest, the smaller man looking up at Steve as he continued his rant.
"Wait. Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah. Please, please, just tell me, whatever it is you're about to do, you've done before, right?"
Steve stared at him with half-lidded eyes for a moment, then lifted an eyebrow. Danny offered Steve a tight smile.
"Ahh. It's classified. Of course."
They stared at each other a moment longer before Steve started smiling at Danny.
"Why—is that concern that I see?"
Danny thrust his chin up and took a step closer.
"Yeah, jerk, I'm concerned. Big deal."
Steve's smile got even bigger as he looked at Danny. He reached out and briefly touched the other man's arm to reassure him.
"I'll be fine. Alright? It's North Korea. What could go wrong?"
Two pairs of blue eyes met and held. Steve felt Danny lean into his touch, then move away as Lori entered the room.
"Do me a favor and watch yourself, huh Steven?"
"I'll think about you the whole time, Danno."
With that, Steve smirked and walked out. Danny stared after him until Lori asked, "Hmm. What'd I miss?"
Danny looked back at Steve's desk and mumbled some response, but Lori wasn't deterred.
"You don't seem too happy about it. Is it something dangerous?"
Danny turned back to Lori, smiling distractedly.
"No, the guy's a Navy SEAL, right? Everything's fine. Nothing to worry about."
Danny was choking on his words a few hours later when Chin called with news that Jenna Kaye had lied to them about going back to D.C. He ran his hand through his hair and repeated what he thought Chin had just said.
"Hold on. I'm sorry. I can't have heard you correctly. Did you just tell me that Jenna Kaye has been living in an apartment on Maui for the last three months? She hasn't been in Washington, D.C., looking for her fiancée?"
"It looks that way, Danny. The landlord showed us a copy of her driver's license with her picture on it."
Before Chin even realized the other detective had hung up on him, Danny was haphazardly riffling through the papers on his desk. The number to Steve's satellite phone was in there somewhere.
"It's North Korea? What could go wrong?," he muttered under his breath.
The beginnings of panic were growing in his gut.
"What could go wrong?! I'll tell you what could go wrong, Steven. They have fucking nuclear weapons! And brain washing! And if something goes wrong—which I'm sure it already has—you're on the other side of the planet! If you do not answer, I am going to kill you."
Danny punched in the numbers for the satellite phone and listened to it ring.
"Come on, Steven. Answer me, buddy. Answer me."
He tried again. And again. And again. Still no answer.
Danny emerged from his office an hour later to see Chin and Kono bent over the giant computer display.
"I just tried Steve's satellite phone twenty times in the last hour. No answer."
Kono looked up at him. Upon seeing Danny's near panic-stricken state, a concerned look crossed her face.
"The area they're in is all deep forest. It may have blocked the signal."
Danny shook his head emphatically, running a hand through his slicked-back hair.
"No. Something is wrong. Something is wrong—otherwise, why would Jenna lie to us?"
Scenarios raced through Danny's mind. Had Jenna abducted Steve so she could kill him to prevent anyone from pinning her as Bethany's murderer? Was she a traitor working as a spy for another government? Would she torture Steve? Or kill him? And there was nothing a detective in Hawaii could do to stop what was happening to Steve in North Korea. Lori's entrance interrupted Danny's thoughts for the second time that day.
"Hi. Any word from Steve?"
"No. Nothing."
"Okay—look. There's got to be a number of logical explanations to why he's not answering."
Danny could not believe people were saying such idiotic things.
"No. There's nothing logical about this. Okay? We just found out that someone we work with, someone that we trusted, has been lying to us for months. And now might have something to do with our murder."
Danny pretended to focus on the display, swallowing hard a few times. As the rest of the team talked about their progress on the case that had set them on the trail of Jenna Kaye's betrayal, he worried about Steve. Steve, who had made the haole detective his partner. Steve, who needed Danny to make sure he did not do anything ridiculously stupid or illegal—usually both. Steve, who was currently in the middle of North Korea with a person of unknown motives and no Danny to watch his back.
"I've got to help her. I'd do the same for you, anybody else here, Danny."
When Jenna had told Steve that she needed him to watch her back, he had thought of Danny. He had imagined that it was his partner asking him to watch his back. And after imagining Danny in the same situation, there was no way that Steve could let Jenna Kaye go to the drop alone.
He could not even picture the look on Danny's face if he told his partner that it was his fault that Steve was going on this mission in the first place. Danny would have an aneurysm at the very least. He seemed incapable of having a normal, level-headed reaction to anything—he would be a terrible SEAL. But even though Danny would be the worst SEAL in the history of SEALdom, he was the best partner Steve had ever had.
As the plane began its descent, Steve ran his hand over his hair in a motion reminiscent of Danny's nervous tick. For all of his reassurances, he had a bad feeling about this mission. He and Jenna did not have control over any element of the drop; he doubted that he could stop the North Koreans from just taking the money and shooting them both. He would give anything to have Danny here watching his back. Jenna looked over at him, and Steve turned his thoughts back to the drop as they reviewed the plan together.
After the landing, Steve and Jenna began their journey to the designated drop site. Steve knew Danny would accuse him of being paranoid, but he could not help but wonder if the driver they had found had been bought and paid for by the North Koreans. If something went wrong, he would not count on the driver to get him and Jenna back to safety. They were alone in the middle of enemy territory.
After an hour of driving increasingly backwater roads, they finally entered forest. They were nearing the border, and according to Jenna, the drop site was ten miles past that. Steve looked over at Jenna.
"Do you have the satellite phone on you? I want to call Danny and let him get a lock on where we are in case something goes bad."
Jenna took out the phone and shook her head.
"We don't have any reception here."
"It's the trees," Steve muttered. "We should have tried him before we got into this forest."
Danny hated trees; no, that was too specific. Danny hated nature of any sort—forests, oceans, the outdoors in general. Maybe "hated" was too strong a word, but Steve could just imagine the litany he would have to listen to if Danny was along. He would be complaining about the trees, the mosquitoes, the dirt, and god knows what else. The North Koreans would be able to hear them coming before they even crossed the border.
Complaints about the forest were not unfounded, though. The vegetation around them was worrisome. It was so thick that the enemy could easily set up an ambush that would go undetected until it was too late. Steve felt his unease about the operation growing. He would feel a lot better if he could have made that phone call. Even if Danny had not been able to track their location from the call, just hearing his voice would have helped ease the uncharacteristic jitters Steve was feeling. He had been on hundreds of operations like this in the Navy; he was used to pre-op apprehension. This was something more, though. The next time he did something like this, he was bringing his partner with him.
They had been driving about fifteen minutes into denser and denser forest—they had to be getting close. Steve clutched his gun tighter and turned to Jenna Kaye.
"Listen to me, Jenna. We don't give these guys any money until we have a positive ID on Josh, okay?"
Jenna nodded at Steve as the North Koreans' vehicle came into view. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Jenna quickly look down at the satellite phone. He wondered if someone was calling them—maybe Danny—but there was no room for distraction now.
The second Steve saw the hooded hostage jump out of the vehicle, his gut told him it was not Josh. The captive was shoved on his knees in front of the North Koreans' vehicle, and Steve got a better look at him. They had been duped: wrong height, wrong weight, wrong skin tone, and not sick enough for someone who had been held for over a year. Everything was wrong. They needed to get out of here now.
And that was when he saw the man hiding behind a tree. The damn trees. Steve reacted with one of the first lessons he had learned as a SEAL—shoot anything that is shooting at you. The North Koreans dropped back behind their vehicle when he started shooting. Since Steve did not have a bulletproof vehicle to hide behind, he used a tree as cover, protecting Jenna and himself. The driver that had brought them to the drop site had run away at the first sign of trouble, but if he could just get to their vehicle—
Click.
The cocking of a pistol behind him brought his planning to an abrupt halt. Turning, Steve felt his belly drop out. Jenna was pointing a pistol straight at him. Behind him, he heard someone walking up. The blow that followed was not unexpected, but when Steve saw who had delivered it, he realized he was in deep shit. Because while North Korea alone might not be enough to scare a super SEAL, North Korea plus Wo Fat was terrifying.
Steve allowed Wo Fat's men to tie him up and passively took the hits they aimed at him. Now was not the time to try to escape—he was in unfamiliar territory with eight heavily-armed North Koreans surrounding him. He wondered if he could somehow get Jenna to turn on Wo Fat. There was no way that the man actually had Jenna's fiancée; she would realize that soon enough. Maybe he could help the process along.
Steve turned to Wo Fat and asked, "How long has she been working for you? That story she told me about her fiancée—is it true?"
Wo Fat ignored him; Steve turned back to look at Jenna. Before the brute behind him whacked him on his head again, he caught a glimpse of Jenna's face—she had bought Wo Fat's lie hook, line, and sinker. The rest of the trek, Steve remained silent. He did not know where he was going, had no idea what kind of escape he would have to plan. And it would be hard—maybe impossible—to get out without Jenna Kaye's help. Was there anybody in his life that he would be so desperate to save that he would turn against friends and team members? Steve was surprised at whose face popped into his head. At this rate, he was going to end up thinking about Danny the whole time.
The group halted suddenly. Wo Fat walked up to a door that was partially hidden by vegetation. Steve did not see a building connected to it; it was just a lone door in the middle of the forest. Wo Fat walked through it and turned backwards, facing them as he climbed down a ladder. The door led to a bunker. Escape was not going to be easy. Bunkers were like underground mazes. There were no windows or other openings to escape through. Even finding a door to get out was difficult.
Steve kept track of the number of steps he took, the directions of the turns, rooms that looked like they were in use, and passages that looked abandoned. Anything he noticed now could help him if he managed to get out of wherever they locked him up. There were more men throughout the bunker; they filled the first two rooms he passed. A horrible, putrefying stench came from the third room they walked by—that would be last on his list of possible escape routes.
The two men who had frog marched Steve through the bunker shoved him through a door just past the third room. He tried to overcome his attackers before their eyes adjusted to the dimness, but it was to no avail. Another man assisted them in tying his hands to the ceiling above. When that man left, the beating began. It seemed to go on forever. The two men in the room did not say anything; they just took turns hitting him.
Hours turned into days; days turned into weeks. Logic told him he could not have been in the bunker more than a day, but it felt like he had been underground much longer. His toes were numb from trying to support himself so his arms would not be wrenched from their sockets. His arms were burning from trying to hold his body up. And he could not even think about anything in between. His captors had been brutal. They would beat him until they tired, rest an hour, then come back and beat him until they tired again. At this point, Steve was actually praying to see Wo Fat. His current tormentors were just the openers; Wo Fat would be the main event.
Steve hung suspended in pain. His only certainty was that his tormentors would return and beat him again. His thoughts drifted back to Five-0. The team must know something had gone wrong. Danny was probably going nuts. Steve was the one who always depressurized Danny when stream started coming out of the blond man's ears. That was how they worked—Steve kept Danny from exploding, and Danny kept Steve from getting exploded. They were partners, and Steve was certain that Danny was trying to find him. If there were any way he could stop him, save Danny and the rest of Five-0 from the rat's nest he had walked into—
The dreaded noise of the door opening halted Steve's thoughts. He braced himself for another beating. The men used their fists this time. The sticks they had used before had stung when they hit his skin, but the punches were causing deeper damage like cracked ribs. Then the door opened again. Steve hoped it would be Wo Fat at last. Instead, a struggling Jenna Kaye was shoved into the room, sans fiancée. The men who had been beating him helped chain her to the wall, then left Steve alone with Jenna. He would rather have finished the beating than be stuck with Jenna; he could not stand looking at her. He might be the one who had suffered from her betrayal, but it could have been anyone on Five-0. It could have been Chin or Kono. Or Danny.
"Why?"
Jenna shook her head in defeat.
"I had no choice."
"We let you in, we treated you as one of our own, we trusted you. I came down here, I didn't ask one question."
"Wo Fat told me Josh was alive."
Steve was disgusted.
"And you just took him for his word?"
"He showed me his ring. He had pictures. But more than anything I needed to believe it. I would have done anything to save him."
Steve was faced again with the question he had asked himself earlier. He knew who he would give anything to save. And while he could not forgive Jenna for her choice, he could understand it.
"So you decided to trade him for me."
"Yes."
"So where is he, Kaye?"
"You have to understand, this reporter came to me, looking into Josh's operation. She said she had a source that said that Josh was alive. And I thought, if anyone could survive…. He's a lot like you. A fighter, you know? There was this one night. We were supposed to have dinner in D.C.—The Capital Grille. And it was raining, and he was late, and his car wouldn't start. So he hops on his bike, of all things. Got in this horrible accident. Got hit by a car. Had to have these pins put in his knee. And when I reached the hospital, I just lit into him. He's always rushing around like that for nothing. That's when he pulled out the ring, and he said, 'It wasn't for nothing.'"
Jenna had no clue how far Wo Fat had played her.
"The reporter who came to you—was her name Bethany Morrison?"
"How did you know?"
"She's dead. She had her neck snapped."
"No….," Jenna moaned.
"You don't get it, do you Kaye? Wo Fat was her source. He sent….," Steve trailed off, then continued haltingly.
"He sent Morrison straight to you. To give you hope. That Josh was still alive."
"And my hope got her killed."
Steve did not say it out loud, but Jenna's hope was going to get more than just Bethany Morrison killed. And he had a good idea who the next victim was going to be when Wo Fat walked through the door with an ominous-looking cudgel in his hand and a gun in his waistband, looking straight at him.
The ominous-looking cudgel turned out to be an electrical, ominous-looking cudgel. Steve could not remember what Wo Fat asked him from one shock to the next. All he could focus on was the constant pain; the pain of the shock itself, and then the pain as his body tried to relax from the tension post-shock.
He would say anything to make it stop. What did it matter? Wo Fat was going to kill him when he was done. He was not a man who left loose ends. Steve knew he was dead either way—why not make the shocking stop sooner? And then Danny's face popped into his head again. Wo Fat was not going to stop with Steve. He was going to go after his whole team, probably Joe White, too.
Echoing his thoughts, Wo Fat asked, "What about Joe White? What did he tell you?"
"Joe White…Joe White doesn't know anything about Shelbourne, okay?"
"You're lying."
And then the pain overcame everything else as Wo Fat put his fists to Steve. Each time he took a blow, he remembered that he was taking it instead of Danny. He needed to get through this and get back to his team before Wo Fat did.
The pain was interrupted by a guard. He showed something to Wo Fat—the satellite phone. Steve shifted his gaze to find Jenna watching him.
"It wasn't for nothing," she whispered, tossing a pin toward Steve seconds before Wo Fat turned and shot her twice in the chest.
Time stopped as Steve watched the bullets hit Jenna Kaye.
"I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!"
Steve screamed his rage at Wo Fat. Nobody shot his team members. Even though Jenna had betrayed them, she had been part of the team. It could have been any Five-0 member in her place. Steve raged uncontrollably as Wo Fat turned from where Jenna's body lay to address him.
"We're getting on a plane in one hour, and you're taking me to Shelbourne."
With that, Wo Fat left the room. The second he was out of sight, Steve acted. It was now or never. Picking up the pin with his toes, he used his bruised muscles to painfully lift the pin to his hands. He picked the lock on his hands in seconds.
Jenna's lifeless body lay in the corner. Steve limped to it. Her eyes stared at him. But they were not just Jenna's eyes—they were Chin's eyes, Kono's eyes. Danny's eyes. He raised his hand to her face and ran his hand down it, closing the haunting dead eyes of his team before beginning his escape.
Ten feet down the hallway, he saw the ladder that led to the outside world. In front of it was a guard. Steve disabled him in seconds. Hearing another guard approach, he stood close to the wall and took down the guard as he passed by. Steve grabbed the man's gun and climbed the ladder to the outside world.
Wo Fat was waiting for him above ground. For the second time that day, Steve found himself falling after a blow from behind. Wo Fat's men swarmed over him with restraints, and he was right back where he had started. He needed to delay. If Five-0 had managed to get a trace on Jenna's final call, they would have this location. He needed to stay here. Steve struggled desperately, but he was eventually overpowered and hauled into the back of one of the trucks in the waiting convoy.
One of Wo Fat's men climbed into the back and stood guard over Steve as the convoy moved out. With the business end of an automatic pointing at him, Steve was not going to try anything. He lay quietly on the floor of the vehicle, squinting toward the slit in the bottom of the cover. Landmarks, funny-looking trees, anything to keep track of where he was—his only hope of rescue was back at the bunker.
At first Steve thought he was imagining the helicopter. The faint droning noise was probably just a bug trapped in the truck. But as it grew closer, he knew his imagination was not playing tricks on him. And then he heard an explosion to the front. His chances of coming out of this alive were slimming by the minute. He felt the trucks turn and reverse course. Uneasy mutterings were coming from the men. When the convoy halted again, Steve curled up as small as he could and waited for the ambush. Seconds later, the gunfire began and his guard jumped out into the fray. Steve resigned himself to death at the bullets of some unknown enemy of Wo Fat. The irony. Danny would kill him if he ever got out of this one.
The canvas on the back of the truck was suddenly thrown open and light flooded over Steve. He opened his eyes and saw Danny's face staring back at him. Steve blinked to clear his eyes. This was not the time for stress-induced hallucinations. Then the hallucination started yelling very realistically.
"It's Steve!"
Danny stared into the dim interior of the truck. It was Steve, battered, bruised and bloodied, but it was Steve. The disoriented eyes staring back at him lit up when he started yelling.
"I've got Steve! He's alive!"
Danny jumped into the truck and scrambled over to Steve. Kneeling over Steve, their legs intertwined, Danny grabbed Steve's hands and held them for a minute as Steve just stared at him.
"Where's Wo Fat?"
Steve's question broke their silence, and Danny hastily started untying his restraints.
"Just shut up, would you?"
The rest of the team appeared at the opening of the truck. Huge smiles covered their faces. Steve continued to stare at the team in a daze.
"Let's move out," Joe White called.
Danny moved behind Steve, and wrapping his arms around him, dragged him to the edge of the truck. Chin moved forward and helped Steve out of the truck, supporting his left side. Sliding down, Danny felt Steve put his right arm over his shoulder. He looked up to see Steve still staring at him through wide blue eyes. Danny slid his left arm along Steve's lower back; his hand found Steve's hip, and his arm wrapped firmly around Steve's waist.
Looking at Chin, he said, "Let's go!"
The team moved briskly toward the opening nearby where the helicopter had landed. Lori jumped out of the helicopter to wrap her arms around her three team members, then moved away as Joe, Danny, and Chin lifted Steve onto the floor of the helicopter. As soon as Danny took his seat, he felt Steve lean back against his leg. Danny set his hand on Steve's shoulder and saw that Steve was staring at him again. Danny grinned.
"Oh, don't worry. You can thank me when we get back to Oahu."