Steve arrived back to his car first, but didn't approach the vehicle. The low-slung model wasn't the best one to bring over the dirt-paved paths, but time had been short with no time to change motors.
Likewise, time was short and the need at the moment great, and Steve needed all the moments that he could get. He selected his spot in the brush, and waited impatiently.
It didn't take long. Three of Hanolo's men hot-footed it onto the path, hustling over to Steve's car to examine the thing. One even put his hand onto the hood, judging correctly that the engine hadn't turned over for the last couple of hours. As long as they didn't raise the hood, Steve thought, that was okay with him. Detaching some of the wires that went from Point A to Point B in the engine would put a serious crimp in Steve's plans. It would take too long to reattach the wires so that he could start the engine.
Hanolo's people were satisfied with the situation. They thought that they'd outrun him. It was a reasonable conclusion—but wrong.
It took another precious couple of minutes for them to decide on a plan that Steve knew was an inevitable conclusion. They elected to separate into three different hiding spots, the better to take aim at an ex-Navy SEAL and his limping partner arriving at their mode of transportation, with the intent of killing both SEAL and cop and leaving their bleeding bodies on the path for someone to find. Steve waited until the three had settled into their respective sniper's nests, then moved.
Quiet. Always quiet. Silence was his friend.
Steve slipped up behind the first one. The only reason the man didn't go down instantly was that Steve needed a moment to decide if his fingers would reach around the man's fat neck with sufficient force to do the job.
They did. Steve cut off blood flow to the brain, pressing hard, until the man's eyes rolled back up into his head. A moment more to make certain, and then he eased the heavy body silently to the ground. A bit of rope from his pack ensured that the man wouldn't be going anywhere very soon.
One down. Two to go.
Number Two's neck was even thicker than Number One's, and Steve didn't have a better option. He used the rope intended for securing the victim for wrapping around the man's neck, choking him into submission. The man writhed, trying to shout, kicking at the surrounding brush. Noisy, too noisy; Steve cursed his luck. It hadn't been loud, but even a hint of sound was too much.
No help for it. Number Three might have been warned, or perhaps not. It all depended on how savvy the man was, how well he knew his business.
Steve located the third man in the brush, across the dirt road. Steve would need to cross open ground in order to get to him, would be an easy target for a man with a gun. Steve fingered his own gun, wondering if he should simply take aim and fire. It was at the far distance of range for his handgun, but it was possible. Possible, but not Steve's style. Killing would be too good for the man. Steve wanted him to face a judge and jury for what he'd done to Danno.
Steve waited until the man turned his head to look down the road, then crossed with his breath held. Would there be a gunshot, a bullet aimed at his back?
Safe in the brush on the other side of the path. The man turned to scan the other portion of the road, skimming right over Steve's new hiding place. Step one: accomplished.
It was the haole from the bar, one of Hanolo's men, the one that had escaped while Steve tended to his wounded teammate. This was the one that Kono had identified as being a cut above the rest, someone who knew what he was doing. Steve could bet that this was the one running the operation to try to get Hanolo out of his tough spot.
He studied the man. Caucasian, not as tall as Steve himself, which meant that Steve had a longer reach. Muscle; all muscle. Sinews flexed beneath a grimy white tee, and Steve smothered a grim smile. He'd just bet that the tee had been less grimy before this all started, and he felt proud of his partner. A lot of the damage to the tee—and the man who wore it—had happened because Danny had had the guts to roll the jeep off of the cliff. Without that, Danny would still be in this haole's clutches, and Steve would be considering how to extract a half-dead hostage, never mind keeping Hanolo in jail.
No, the odds were now in Steve's favor, even though the haole didn't know it. It didn't matter that the man held his own handgun; handguns weren't for close-in work. Time to cash in the chips. Steve McGarrett advanced on silent feet. Crouching, he sprang at the man.
Too late he saw the knife in the man's hand. Twisting in mid-air, Steve tried to avoid the danger.
A flash of fire-tipped agony in his arm told him that he'd only been partially successful. Steve didn't realize that he'd yelled out until the echoes of sound died away.
With the knife, the advantage of Steve's reach melted away. The knife gave the haole another six inches, enough to match Steve's longer arms with a sharp blade to increase the danger. Steve also noted the coiled whip lashed to the man's belt, and knew instantly with cold fury that this was the man responsible for Danno's condition.
This haole was going down.
Not subtle, and not gentle. Steve put away the fire in his arm as something that would interfere with the mission. He stepped in; he blocked the downward strike of the knife almost negligently. Slam forward with the palm of his hand—temper it just so to avoid a killing strike. Rattle the brains.
The man staggered back. Steve drove himself forward, pursuing. Another blow to the head, with agony to the ear drums. The man clapped his hands to his ears, dropping the knife in his sudden pain.
Not good enough. Steve grabbed one arm to haul the man forward, keeping him off balance. A sweep of the foot, and he knocked the man's legs from beneath him. The man fell to the forest floor.
Steve still had hold of the man's arm. He yanked. The arm came out of its socket.
The haole screamed.
This, Kono knew, would be as much of a performance as anything she'd done in the bar to bring Hanolo in.
Chin was still working on trying to find this 'Nathan Detroit' who had signed out the tape from the Evidence Room. Emerson had signed it out to him. Emerson's finances had come up clean, but that didn't mean that he wasn't dirty. It just meant that he'd done a better job of covering his trail. If anyone could do it, it would be Emerson. The man had had some forty years with HPD, and had seen every way it could be done. He'd know the ways it could fail, and the things to avoid. 'Nathan Detroit' could be a ploy to distract Five-O while he got away.
So she couldn't alert him. She couldn't clatter down the stairs to the Evidence Room, excited and upset and obvious. Before Kono opened the door to the corridor leading to the Evidence Room, she took a long moment to pause and settle her nerves.
Ralph 'Emerson' Waldo was just over sixty-five, with white hair in unruly ringlets all over his head; no male-pattern balding in his genes. He was only an inch or two taller than Kono herself, and almost as slender. He always wore half-glasses and had, he'd once told her, since the day he'd turned fifty. Now he added a magnifying glass to his regimen for the times when even the cheaters weren't enough. Soon, the word was, he wouldn't need the magnifying glass. His retirement party was set for the sixteenth of next month, never mind the squawks of refusal.
If Emerson was dirty, Kono wouldn't need any help in taking him down. The biggest difficulty that she would have would be to avoid breaking any bones while doing it. That wasn't the point; if he was dirty, Kono and her team wanted the connections, the details, and—most of all—a confession. That would go a long way toward ensuring that Hanolo and his people would spends years behind bars until they all looked like Emerson.
So Kono put a spring into her step and a smile on her face. "Yo, Emerson," she called out. "You in there?"
"I'm here. I'm here." Emerson limped toward the front of the room, the window barred from the inside. "I'm always here."
Kono frowned. "You okay?"
"Just my sciatica acting up, missy." Emerson changed the subject. "You find Williams yet?"
"Yes." Kono let her relief show on her face. "Steve has him. He's bringing him in to testify." They discussed this, she and Chin, whether or not to tell the truth to Emerson. Keep the pressure low, or wrachet it up by telling Emerson that the end game was close? They'd finally decided to put Emerson to the test. If he was dirty, then he'd be rattled by the thought that Hanolo would be going down. If Emerson was clean, he'd only be grateful that the cop that he knew and worked with was alive.
"Good." Emerson seemed genuinely pleased to hear that. Maybe he was simply a good actor?
Kono pressed on. "We're still trying to track down whoever wiped the tape."
Emerson sniffed. "I'm hoping you've already erased my name from the list, missy. Or are you sniffing around my retirement investments? I'll save you the trouble," he added. "I've been moving some fairly large sums around. Let me know if you want the account numbers."
"Thanks. I'll do that." No need to tell the man that they'd already dug into his background. Kono relaxed just that little bit more; Emerson's response was sounding better and better, and that was a relief. Kono really didn't want the gentle old man to be a traitor to the department.
"So, what can I do for you, Kono? You said you were still tracking the tape. How can I help?"
Kono took a deep breath. "We can't find the last name to sign out the tape, Emerson, this Nathan Detroit person, from the D.A.'s office. We've been through the databases, three times, and nobody's heard about him. He's not leaving any records. Now, it could be a glitch in the computer systems—"
"Little lady, are you daft?" Emerson demanded.
Kono blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Haven't you ever heard of Nathan Detroit?"
"Uh…no?"
Emerson snorted. "What are they teaching you youngsters these days?" He leaned forward. "Nineteen fifty, missy. Broadway. Written by a guy named Loesser, little musical called 'Guys and Dolls', based on a couple of stories by Damon Runyan—you heard of him, right? Upbeat sort of thing about romance—and gangsters. Head gangster was a guy called Nathan Detroit." He settled himself back into his chair. "Now, you think you're going to find 'Nathan Detroit' in your fancy computer files?"
Kono's heart sank. "Then…"
Emerson nodded. "Means somebody came in, flashed some real ID at me, signed in with a wrong moniker, and waltzed out with the tape."
Kono swallowed. "You remember who it was?"
Emerson shook his head sorrowfully. "Me, I'm good, but I'm not that good. I don't know all hundred of the people working in the D.A.'s office. I got a couple hundred people coming in and out of here all day long. No way I'm going to remember just one of those instances."
Sleeping, or had he passed out? Danny considered the problem, and dismissed it as inconsequential.
What had a great deal more relevance was that his boss, one Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett, had slipped his hands under Danny's head and shoulders and was hoisting him onto his feet.
Oh, and had Danny mentioned that his eyes didn't work particularly well without a source of blood to keep them going?
Apparently he just did, because the aforementioned lieutenant commander was chuckling at him. Bastard.
Well, then how about the fact that Detective Danny Williams was about to do a face plant right in the middle of the pineapple patch?
In response to that, Danny felt his arm being wrapped over Steve's shoulders, and Steve's hand snagged Danny's belt, supporting his weight. Danny's head, bereft of any support from his neck, lolled heavily against Steve's arm. His knees sagged.
"You can do this, Danno. My car is just down the hill."
"That's all right, then. It's all down hill." Danny swallowed hard, commanding his insides to stay inside where they belonged. "You sure we have to move this fast?"
His boss turned sober. "Only if we want Hanolo to get what's coming to him."
"Yeah. I can get into that." Pause. "Am I moving faster now?"
"Not noticeably. No."
"How about now?"
"Oh, definitely."
"Liar."
"Guilty as charged."
Danny concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He also concentrated on breathing past the stabbing in his side. "Are we there yet?"
"Almost."
Suddenly Steve's hands that held him upright changed position, easing Danny into what felt—and smelled—suspiciously like Steve's car. Danny almost gratefully sank onto the seat, air whistling out of him in a groan, feeling Steve strapping the seatbelt securely around him. Vision was a lost cause, but the leather of the seat in the car was soothing to his lacerated back, sending tendrils of sun-heated warmth to ease the pain.
He never knew when Steve started the engine, moving the car over uneven ground as fast as it would go.
"Just as I predicted." Mr. Wing, the prosecutor, joined Chin and Kono outside the courtroom. "I approached His Honor, and it doesn't please him to extend the time limit to get Williams into the courtroom. He wants to get home to his dinner. Why, I couldn't tell you since I hear that his wife is a terrible cook, but I'm not about to say that to him. How long will it take McGarrett to get Williams here?"
Chin automatically glanced up at the oversized clock on the wall, easing his arm in its sling. "It'll be close. Steve intends to run a few red lights."
Wing followed his gaze. "What about a police escort? Clear the road?"
Kono had the answer. "We thought about that, but that will only warn Hanolo's people," and she jerked her thumb at the oversized trio down the hall still watching the Five-O detectives, "that they're on the way in. Steve is worried about snipers outside the courthouse."
Wing looked alarmed. "You think that Hanolo's got a sniper on his payroll? He's not that big, officer."
"He doesn't have to be big," Chin responded. "He just has to be lucky. Some of his known associates are ex-military, mustered out as soon as they found out that service to your country meant hard work. At least one of them knows his way around a rifle."
"Which means that we can't afford to take a chance," Kono chimed in. "Steve is going to arrive quietly at the back entrance, slip Danny in and up to the courtroom before anyone knows that they've arrived. There's too much open ground in front; too much opportunity for a good shot from one of those snipers."
"Good plan." Wing nodded grimly. He jerked his head toward the courtroom. "I'll go work on the judge some more. Maybe I can get him to change his mind, give your people a few more minutes." He sighed. "Prayer wouldn't hurt, either."
Steve glanced briefly at the man in the seat next to him. The primary source of movement in his partner was the car, taking the curves at speeds only achieved by expert training or by insanity. The chest occasionally rose and fell, but not nearly well enough to suit Steve. Should I be headed toward the nearest emergency room instead of the courthouse? Will I be bringing in a dead witness?
No. Danny would never forgive himself—or Steve—if Hanolo walked. It was the man's reason for being. Dan Williams worked, lived, and breathed being a cop, and he was good at it. The only excuse for Danno not to testify would be if he were still in the clutches of Hanolo's people—or dead.
Danny Williams wasn't dead yet. He wouldn't be for a long time, if Steve McGarrett had anything to say about it. Steve fed more gas to the engine, speeding up out of the curve to take advantage of the mile of straight road before city streets with traffic and pedestrians took over.
Cell phone time. "Chin?"
"Right here, boss."
"What's the word?"
"All set on this end. Kono's in position. We're ready."
One more quick glance at Danny, sleeping in the front seat. Sleeping? Hell, call it what it was, Steve: unconscious. 'Half-dead' works, too. "You have some medics stashed in the basement?"
"And an ambulance in the garage. They'll take over as soon as Danny finishes testifying. The prosecutor wasn't able to persuade the judge to wait," Chin added. "It's all up to you, Steve."