*NOTE* I think the muse has gotten hold of some illicit drugs; she seems to be cruising right along this weekend. Where were we again? Oh yes, in a bad place ...

"All silent save the dripping rain." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

3. ANGRY COPS AND ANGRY SKIES

"Well, slick; things don't look too good for you from where I'm standing." Lou stares at the chubby young Hawaiian cuffed to the chair in Interrogation. "Conspiracy to murder, resisting arrest; just to name a few charges that we're gonna make stick to you."

Maka swallows convulsively. He's in way over his head; letting his big cousin Tony talk him into making a large wad of money turns out to be the worst decision of his short life.

"You're gonna be enjoying a view from behind vertical blinds for a long time to come." Lou tilts his head. "Of course a pretty boy like yourself could secure privileges in jail if you're willing to, ehm, provide a certain service." Lou watches the young man squeeze his eyes shut, as if trying to block out some decidedly unpleasant images.

Lou grins. "Anyway, you stay put, and in a little while some nice police officers will come to take you away. Now I wouldn't be surprised if they're gonna take the long, scenic route to jail. I'm sure they want to talk to you about the four colleagues that lost their lives out on telephone Road this afternoon."

Throwing one last look at the terrified youngster, Lou opens the door and walks out. Danny is leaning against the wall just outside the door, rubbing his wounded arm. "Think he might spill the beans?" Lou grins. "Give it half an hour or so, and he'll start squealing like a stuck pig."

They walk back to Chin and Kono, converging around the PC table. Chin looks up. "Hey guys. I've been trying to work out the route Steve might have taken to get to Telephone Road. Do any of you remember what he was doing just before we got the call from HPD?"

Danny frowns, trying to think back. "He was going to check up on some last details with regard to the Pahia case so we could close that, but I don't think he said anything specific about where he was going." Chin sighs. "I've checked for incident reports on Tantalus Drive or any of the nearby roads involving a Silverado, but so far nothing."

They stand in silence, frustrated. It's as if their boss and friend has gone up in thin air.

Steve. Hey, Steve!

The voice is insistent, demanding his attention, the words bright white flashes which penetrate the darkness enveloping his mind.

Come on, man; what are you doing?

What's he doing? Nothing. Just hanging around. Literally.

Exactly, man; you're doing nothing!

The voice, sounding eerily like Danny, is annoyed, almost angry. It's expecting him to do something; but what?

How about trying to get out of this mess. Try anything to get out of there.

He's becoming irritated. Go away he thinks. There's nothing he can do about this situation. He's trapped inside a wreck somewhere down the side of a mountain. Not only that, he's a physical wreck himself; shattered, broken.

So you're gonna quit? Give up?

It sounds tempting. It will be so much easier to just let himself sink deeper into the darkness, to allow it to draw him down completely. Just stop fighting for every breath, stop struggling to draw air into his lungs, into a chest that brings agony with every movement.

I see. You're going to let down the team. Screw 'em, right?

The team? A small frown appears on his face, images flash behind his eyelids. Images of Chin, Kono, Lou ... Danny. No, he can't let them down, he has a responsibility towards them. He starts feebly struggling towards consciousness.

That's it; fight! Use those bad-ass SEAL skills of yours, babe.

Using every last bit of will power, he claws his way up from the darkness. When he finally manages to surface into consciousness, the first thing that penetrates his awareness is a gut-wrenching pain. He's screaming inside, but all that comes out is a soft groan. Then he slowly opens his eyes, blinking.

The inside of the pickup is now completely dark, too dark even to make out shadows. He's still in the same position; one arm above his head, the other trapped in the door. His legs are caught behind the console and the steering column; at least, he thinks they are. He still can't feel them.

And there's that sound again, the wheezing and rattling every time he inhales and exhales. He feels his chest heave with the effort of every agonizing lung full of air he tries to draw in; feels the seat belt tightly wrapped around his neck, cutting into the flesh beneath his chin. Slowly choking him.

Something's different though, has changed since the last time he was conscious. It's not just the cold, chilling him to the core. It takes him a little while to figure out what it is, but then he gets it.

There's water inside the cabin.

"Let's go see if the canary will sing before they cage it." Lou gets up from his chair, looks outside, frowns. It's now completely dark, and raining harder. The two HPD officers coming to collect the young suspect shook themselves like wet dogs once inside, gratefully accepting the warm mugs of coffee supplied by Kono. They now sit at the conference table, nursing the hot beverage.

Danny has been hopping from one leg to the other the past twenty minutes. He's anxious, frustrated about Steve's disappearance and the fact that they don't have a clue on how to proceed. His plan to just hop in his car, start driving around to see if he can find a trace of Steve or his pickup, has been shot down by his team mates.

"Where would you go, Danny; where would you start? It's dark and you don't know where to look. Besides, it's pouring down."

Chin continues to check for accident reports, calling every medical facility on the island to see if they have admitted Steve, reaching out to every garage to see if the Silverado has been brought in, checking every odd occurrence reported by highway maintenance crews.

So far he's come up empty handed, and as the evening progresses, more and more of the phone calls he places remain unanswered.

"Come on, Danny, join me in Interrogation. Get your mind off things for a while." Sighing, Danny follows Lou towards the interrogation room. When they enter, Maka startles like a spooked animal, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"So, you ready to go with the HPD officers?" The young man's glance darts between the two Five-0 members looking at him. Danny walks towards him, hands in his pockets, a frown on his face. He stares at Maka for a while, then he bends over, leaning towards him.

"What do you know about Slobodan Lukic? Why was there an expensive hit-man waiting for the police?"

Maka nervously licks his lips, scrapes his throat. "I know nothing about no Serb hit-man, honestly."

Danny frowns, looks at Lou, then back at the Hawaiian teenager, then back at Lou again. "Did I mention he was Serbian? I don't think I said he was Serbian. All I did was mention his name, not his nationality." He looks back and stares at Maka, suddenly reaching out and grabbing the back of the chair he's sitting on.

"You better start talking, and start talking fast, or what the HPD officers would like to do to you will be a walk in the fucking park compared to what I'll do to you!" Maka recoils, a look of outright fear on his face as the angry detective menacingly hovers over him.

"All right, man, OK." Nervously licking his lips again, he continues: "Tony, that's my cousin, he said we could make some easy bucks, some big money. All we had to do was keep these cops in place, you know, make sure they couldn't leave."

He swallows, his throat dry with anxiety. Danny's deepening frown urges him on. "There was this dude, this haole guy who gave us instructions where to set up in the house. He gave us the guns. This other guy - you know, that Serb you just mentioned - he picked himself a spot in the trees to make sure nobody would get out. He's the one that was making the kill shots, not us."

Lou and Danny look at each other, completely bewildered. Then Lou turns back to Maka. "Why did you have to keep the police in place, why kill them? It was a simple arrest; no big names, no long jail sentences ..." Maka licks his lips again. "It wasn't about the arrest, man. Like I said, it was about getting as many cops there as possible, and keeping them there."

Frowning, Lou turns towards Danny. "This make sense to you? Because it sure as hell doesn't make any sense to me." Danny absentmindedly rubs his arm. "Some kind of retaliation, somebody who has a severe grudge against the police?" He mulls things over in his mind, retracing the events.

Turning towards Maka, Danny glowers at him. "Who wanted the cops dead? Which one of the two men?" The young man shakes his head. "I don't know, man. Could be them, or it could be the other guy."

Lou steps up towards the chair. "What other guy? Why didn't you mentioned him before? Talk!" He slams his hand down on the back of the chair, causing Maka to jump. "Sorry! This other guy, he left with the first haole just before the cops started arriving. Some long tall dude, never said a word."

"So there were three men; the hit-man, the haole and the tall guy. That's it? You sure?" Lou glowers at Maka, who nods. "Anything else you think you might want to tell us, something you might have forgotten?" The young man shakes his head, then watches with some anxiety as Danny closes in on him again.

"How about you give us a description of these two men. We already know who the hit-man is, we got him down in the morgue." Maka nervously scrapes his throat. "The guy who gave us the guns was a short guy, dark hair, I don't know, something like thirty years old. The other guy, the tall one, he was bald, skinny. He looked sick or something, very pale."

Something clicks in Danny's mind. "Anything else about this man you can remember, anything unusual?" Maka frowns, then nods. "Yeah, he had this bad-ass scar on his head, running all the way over the top. Like somebody put an ax into him."

Danny turns towards Lou, a frown on his face. "That sounds like Peter Wright. We never did manage to find out whether or not he left the island." Lou nods. "Guess now we know."

The Wright case had been of particular interest to him because it tied back to an old case he had worked on in Chicago. Unfortunately, they hadn't found enough evidence to make anything stick to the man, and he had walked. When Wright came to Oahu several months ago, he had tried setting up a Crystal Meth network. Five-0 picked up on his intentions, started hounding him, and after several weeks of hard work and gathering information, they tightened the net around him, effectively shutting him down. He managed to evade arrest, but there was no way he could ever go back into business again.

Lou stares at Maka. "Well, that information basically got us nowhere, but thanks anyway." He steps up to the chair, unlocks the handcuffs and then re-locks them behind Maka's back. "Time for you to be introduced to prison life, my friend."

Danny looks at Maka, then stops Lou just as he's about to walk out into the hallway. "Tell me, did these guys say anything about where they were going; you know, when they left, right before you and your buddies started killing innocent cops?"

Maka blanches. "Hey, like I told you, we didn't kill anybody ! That was all that Serb guy's doing, man!" Danny nods. "Yeah, yeah, so you told us; you're as innocent as a choir boy. Now answer the fucking question; did they say where they were going, do you have any idea where they went?"

The young Hawaiian shrugs. "Something about taking care of business, about tying off loose ends. They didn't say where or what. The only thing the haole said was that it was important to keep the cops there as long as possible, especially you guys."

Lou roughly turns Maka around, pulling him close until their faces almost touch. "What do you mean, especially us guys; you mean Five-0?!" Maka nods, terrified. "He said that, if Five-0 turned up, we weren't allowed to let you leave, no matter what happened. That's all man, honestly!"

Lou swings him around again and walks towards the main room, Danny in his wake. When the HPD officers see them enter, they get up from the conference table. Glowering, they take over custody of Maka, then march him out the door.

"I'm telling you, I wouldn't want to trade places with that kid" Lou muses. Chin nods. "Even though it's against regulation, chances are he'll arrive at the prison in worse shape than when he left here. They're not too big on cop killers here."

Danny sits down at the conference table, hands running though his hair, then straightening it back up again. He rocks the chair from two legs to four and back again, frowning, thinking about the things the young Hawaiian has been saying. Tying off loose ends ... we weren't allowed to let you leave ...

He has the feeling he is missing something; something important.

The voice is nagging him again, obviously displeased at his lack of progress.

Come on, Steve; put a little heart into it.

He groans, both at being rebuked and because trying to move his right arm is excruciatingly painful. Wiggling his fingers, now completely numbed by the cold water flowing across them, he tries to inch closer to his gun. Finally, he feels something hard bump against his fingers.

There you go. Now grab it.

He tries, he honest to God tries, but his wet, numb fingers keep losing their grip on the water-slicked metal. A sudden bright flash, almost immediately followed by a roll of thunder, causes him to spasm. He groans out loud as the spasm sends white hot shards of pain shooting through his entire body.

OK, no problem. Just catch your breath and try again.

Catching his breath; that's almost funny. He hears the wheeze as he draws in air, feels the anguish in his chest as it moves to expand his lungs. When he tries to move his head to relieve the strain on his neck, still bent at a nearly impossible angle, as well as lift his chin still digging into his chest, he feels the seatbelt tighten even further, wrapping itself around his painfully swollen throat.

Uh oh; that wasn't a smart move I think.

He agrees. The flow of air into his lungs is now so severely restricted that dark spots start floating in front of his eyes. He knows it will only take a little while longer before he passes out, before his system shuts down due to lack of oxygen. Whatever he does, he has to do it quickly.

That's right, just keep moving, keep trying. If you pass out, well ... you know.

Yeah, he knows. If he passes out now, he will not wake up again. It will be Game Over. So he uses every ounce of strength he has left to extend his hand just a little further, to make his fingers cover just a little more distance.

When they touch the cold metal of the gun again, he forces himself to remain calm. There are now more spots dancing across his vision, but he concentrates on making sure he has a good grip on his weapon before trying to retrieve it.

That's it, Steve. Slowly, but not too slow please. I think you're fading ...

The voice is right; he is fading, and fading fast. As he strains one last time, the seat belt tightening even further by the movement, he feels his fingers wrap themselves around the grip. Wanting to ensure he won't lose it, he snakes a finger through the trigger guard, securing the gun in his hand.

Then he wonders why he has made the effort. After all, dead men have no use for weapons.

He blacks out.