A/N: Here we go - SuperSEAL to the rescue, but, who's going to rescue SuperSEAL?
CHAPTER 11
Friday, 7:45pm, Haleakala Crater Hunting Reserve, Mau'i
"They're here." Paolo breathed excitedly. The man was shorter than his nastier companion, more compact, but just as solid. He sported a full head of lustrous black hair, slicked back with enough pomade to make a certain blonde detective just a little jealous, if he wasn't so completely out of it at the moment. The man's black mustache covered his entire upper lip, and the tips hung down to his chin, ending in a twist to the side, giving him rather a "Che Guevara" look. His dark eyes were currently glued to the area immediately in front of the door of the cabin.
"I see someone standing on the edge of the clearing. What's he…? He's taking off his vest and his gun holster!"
"Get ready, boys, the party's about to start," Diego chuckled while training his gun sights on the dark haired man, swimmingly visible in the fog-shrouded clearing by way of the dim light from the cabin. "I think he wants to talk!"
"It could be a diversion," Paolo whispered back. "He can't be alone out there."
"No, he wants to see if his buddy's still alive." Diego glanced over to the flea bitten mattress, and saw the labored rise and fall of the cop's chest. "Good job, little hijo," he directed his words toward a suddenly fully awake Ayden. You get to die fast, maybe even first!"
"Hello the cabin. This is Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett, Five-0. Drop your weapons and come out in the open with your hands in the air."
Steve was acknowledged with a bullet digging into the ground a foot in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.
"Hello, Commander! Welcome! Nice try! I suppose you want to see your little buddy? Better hurry on in, he doesn't look like he's got much time left before meeting his maker," bellowed the hidden voice inside the cabin.
Steve gritted his teeth, locking his jaw in an uncomfortable position meant to help remind him to keep his composure, even though all he wanted to do was tear the face behind that disembodied voice to shreds. He had to get into that shack and find out just what he was up against. Raising his arms high, he slowly approached the building. As he got close, the metal door suddenly opened, while at the same time the light inside was extinguished.
Stopping just outside the door, Steve contemplated his next move, deciding to go along with the voice, at least until he got inside the cabin.
"Don't be shy, Commander. Your friend can't wait forever, now, can he?" The floating voice continued to taunt Steve.
Knowing that Chin and Kono had his back, for all the good it would do once he was inside, Steve took the single step through the entry, disappearing into the darkened enclosure.
_H50H50H50_
No sooner had Steve cleared the threshold into the black-as-night room than he was grabbed around the neck and shoved to the floor on his knees, his head firmly locked in place against his assailant's hip. He heard the screech of the metal door scraping the floor as it was kicked shut behind him, and felt the air explode out of his lungs as a rifle butt connected squarely with a kidney.
The pain meant nothing to him. He could and would endure ten times worse to get to his partner's side, but Steve couldn't immediately see where Danny was, as his eyes required some adjustment to the darkness. Then he heard it, the rattling, raspy breaths emanating from low down in the east corner of the cabin. That's all he needed to know, nothing else mattered. His brother was alive.
"Let me go to my partner," Steve growled while he gulped down what little air was getting by his closed off windpipe into his lungs.
Diego snickered harshly, reveling in his glory to hold this much power over a supposedly omnipotent cop.
"What's the matter, McGarrett? Are you sniveling over that wasted piece of meat in the corner? The bull made short change of him. He's not worth your breath. Too bad he's the one who stepped into the barn, though. You're the one 'Ferdinand the Bull' was supposed to do a number on. You were lucky then, but you should be worrying about your own hide and your buddies out there in the brush, now. Why don't you call them in and we can get this over with?"
The vaingloriously smug tone of his captor's voice pushed Steve over the edge. He'd had enough of this shit, and it was time to move. He hoped Chin and Kono had gotten into position to take action from his cue, but it really didn't matter, because he was ending this now. He knew there were at least two assailants in the cabin – the one that currently had him in a headlock, and another somewhere behind him, who had delivered the jab to his kidney. Quickly evaluating his chances, Steve felt a positive outcome was at least 30/70 in his favor. He was good with that. Actually, he would go even if the odds were 99 to 1 against him.
Steve fine-tuned his keen sense of hearing to locate the one not holding him in a head lock, as behind and slightly to the right of his position. Clearing his mind, he went into autopilot, instinctively pulling from the recesses of his brain, the correct course of action drilled into him at Coronado eons ago.
Acting with swift intent, Steve grasped his assailant's wrist and forearm with both his hands, and pulled down hard, clearing his airway. Taking a huge gulp of air, he tucked his chin down and away from the man's grip, and wrapped his right arm around the other man's waist. Stepping up and away, he swept his foot against the leg and pushed off from the surprised man's chest, lifting him up off the floor, and then slamming him back down, completely stunning the arrogant son of a bitch.
A split second later, Steve twirled on the second goon, catching him off guard by the suddenness of the attack. A single roundhouse kick to the head had him down and out for the count, but then, Steve's luck ran out. Just as he lurched to the wall by the door to find and flip the light switch, he was tackled from behind once again. Obviously, he had miscalculated. There was a third person in the cabin who was no friend to McGarrett's cause.
-H50H50H50-
Ayden had made him self as small as possible after Paolo alerted Diego of the rest of the Five-0 team's arrival. He sat alongside the mattress, his eyes trained on the two men holding Commander McGarrett at bay outside.
"No, no, no. This is not good." Ayden silently prayed the Commander wouldn't start shooting at the cabin, as he had no place to hide from cascading bullets! He shrank back further when Diego killed the light in the room, and overwhelmed the Commander as he crossed over the entryway.
It was hard for the scared young man to see, let alone process, what happened next. Without light in the room, all he could make out were shadows. One minute the Commander was in an apparently inescapable chokehold, begging Diego to let him go to his partner, and the next, the sound of a violent scuffle flooded Ayden's ears. He was flabbergasted when McGarrett turned on the overhead light, and he saw Diego and Paolo both flat on their backs on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he spotted movement. The silent partner, who had remained unnoticed in the far corner of the room, was instantly on McGarrett, pulling the Commander back away from the door, and holding a rifle barrel directly in his face.
Ayden sprang to life. What Danny had tried so hard to impress upon him had finally sunk in – Five-0 would come to their aid, but he would have to help them! In a cowboy's fluid movement, Ayden flung himself at the silent beast of a man, trying to wrestle the rifle out of his hands. Of course, he was no match for the much larger man, and was tossed aside like a broken toy. Still, the distraction gave the Commander the opportunity to kick the thug in the gut and send him flying backwards into the cabinet alongside the stove. Steve moved in for the final take down.
-H50H50H50-
In the thirty seconds it took for all that to transpire, Chin and Kono had advanced on the cabin, guns drawn. Hearing the ruckus from the fighting inside, Chin motioned Kono to be ready. Just as he positioned himself to kick in the door, a single shot rang out from inside the cabin, followed by complete and total silence.
-H50H50H50-
He was enveloped in a cocoon, gently floating in a warm, safe sea of liquid. Nothing touched him, nothing hurt him. He was at peace and all was blissfully right as his mortal world seemed to be slipping farther away from his consciousness. But…something was changing…sounds from outside his safe little cocoon were starting to tear the fabric apart, and force their way inside. Self awareness slowly started to return, and with it, he felt his sense of well-being cruelly wrenched away from him. Amid the rising levels of pain starting to wrack what must be his body, unwelcome feelings of being trapped, of being incapable of escaping the too tight bubble that moments before was a safe haven, gripped him hard. "Not good. Where the heck am I? Why can't I move? Need to get out. I really can't deal with tight dark places…"
Overwhelming panic was about to take command of his mind when somewhere in the distance he heard a voice, as if coming from down a very long, echoing hallway. It was familiar, and yet, not. The voice was rough, loud, and with a frantic sense of urgency that confused him since it was not the way he remembered this voice to sound. It was too brief, but that was okay. He could feel it pulling him back to what mattered, to the unfinished life still before him, all he had to do was grab on, and he'd be out of this dark prison.
Danny reached toward that voice of security, the voice of his partner. Steve was here with him. He opened his eyes…
Full awareness brought Danny back to the present just in time to see his partner easily manage to land a solid kick squarely to the gut of a giant, propelling said giant into the kitchen cabinet. Danny almost heard the air blast out of the suddenly subdued Braddah's lungs as all fight fled his body, and he sunk like a rock to the floor.
Movement, to the left, another huge person ("why are all these people so big?") struggling to his feet, rifle in hand. "Steve! Gun! He's not secured!" Danny could have sworn he was shouting at the top of his lungs, as he could hear his words rattling around in his brain, but Steve never acknowledged him. He had to do something though, as his partner was about to be shot in the back.
In his attempt to make his presence known to Steve, he moved enough to roll onto something hard underneath his body. His feeble change of position ratcheted up the pain to a nearly intolerable level, his vision wavering in and out of focus, but the reality of the hurt awoke all his senses, making him aware of the godsend still tucked in his waistband.
In what felt like slow motion to him, Danny reached for the weapon, and just as the one called "Diego" was about to fire at an unsuspecting Steve, Danny struggled to raise his torso off the mattress, aimed his service revolver, and pulled the trigger.
-H50H50H50-
Steve spun around at the resounding boom of a gun discharging in close quarters, in time to see Diego smack the floor face down, unmoving, a lethal bullet hole neatly placed in the middle of the man's spine. McGarrett looked up then, directly into Danny's murky, pain-filled blue eyes. The two partners were seared together as one in that moment in time, each silently acknowledging his security in the presence of the other, knowing one would move heaven and earth to always have the other's back.
Then the light went out in Danny's eyes, and he fell back onto the mattress, his gun falling sharply out of his suddenly lifeless hand, to clatter to the floor.
"Danny!' Steve covered the distance between them in a giant leap. "Danny, I'm here, buddy. It's over. We're going home." Fumbling with his suddenly useless fingers, Steve fearfully sought for a carotid pulse. It was there, but almost too subtle to find. Nonplussed by the heat radiating off of Danny's skin, Steve knew they were in deep trouble. Infection had already settled in, and there was nothing to be done for it until they got Danny to the hospital.
"Kono, call it in! We've got to get him out of here as fast as we can!"
Kono and Chin had burst through the door, weapons poised to fire at any sign of conflict, a hairsbreadth of a second after Danny had saved his partner's life. Chin proceeded to handcuff those still breathing, including a sobbing, but apparently unhurt, Ayden Aikau.
"Is … is he alright?"
"You better start praying he makes it, brah. If he dies, I sincerely doubt you'll make it to trial. That woman over there," Chin fiercely pointed to Kono as she made the all clear call, "will chew you up and spit you out like the worm you are, and that man there, will snap your neck like a toothpick. I'll just shoot you in the face and call it good."
Ayden dropped his chin to his chest. The mess he had gotten himself into, all for the promise of fast cash to buy a horse, had gone so far south he didn't see any way to ever find daylight again. His head hurt something terrible. How did life become so unfair? He was starting to feel queasy and the room was shifting wildly on its axis.
"I didn't realize, you know." Ayden conversationally started talking. "I was only supposed to get Commander McGarrett up to that pasture. I didn't know what Mr. Montoya had planned. That one," Ayden pointed his head towards Diego's body, "knocked me out when I got to the calf shed, and I didn't even see what happened to Detective Williams."
Chin merely humphed while Ayden continued to jabber away, "I held the detective's head when we bounced across the ruts, I could tell it hurt him. He… he told me to pour some water on my shirt and drip it into his mouth. Have you ever done that? I've never heard of it before. He was nice." Ayden smiled happily as he remembered helping Danny earlier.
Steve angrily swung away from ministering to Danny to glare at Ayden. "Shut him up, Chin. We don't need this now."
"You better be quiet," Chin looked into Ayden's eyes as he tried to connect with the confused young man. He could see signs of shock and a probable concussion from the head wound.
"Steve, he's going to need medical attention, too. Concussion, at the very least."
"I knew I should do something, but what could I do against four guys?" Ayden pleaded for Chin's understanding, his mood suddenly shifting from happy to fearful.
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Nothing you could do," Chin was trying to calm the young man's agitation when Ayden's words suddenly sunk in. "Four? Ayden, did you say four men?"
Bemused, Ayden looked around the room, as if looking for something important, before continuing, "Uh huh. Diego told the man with the phone to stay outside and be… um…back up?"
Simultaneously jumping up and unslinging his shotgun, Chin shouted to Steve and Kono, "We've got trouble! There were four perps, one stayed outside, and he had a phone!"
"Damn it," roared Steve as he heard the first bullet break through the glass windowpane above Danny's head. Throwing his body over Danny's, he yelled at the rest of his team to take cover. "Stupid! So stupid! I didn't think beyond getting to Danny. Now we're the ones holed up in this shack and we don't know how much fire power we're up against. All, my, fault."
"Yes, Steven. Even when I'm out of it, you are still getting me shot at! Now, get over your self-throttling, and finish this. I want to go home." Danny's voice in his brain, stridently reminding him that he had a mission to finish, spurred Steve into action.
The Five-0 team, all together again, even though one could not realistically be considered in the fight, reached positions at each window, and started returning fire.
-To Be Continued-
A/N: Yes I know, not your favorite place to end, but there were so many spots in this chapter where I could have stopped, but didn't! You should be thanking me!