Thanks for still having some patience with me, and as always for all the support.
This chapter originally had over 5k words, so I decided to split it in two instead. Enjoy reading.
Steve's head came out of the darkness when he heard the voice. It was like a mist clearing in front of him. He thought he recognized the voice, but wasn't sure.
"Come on, McGarrett," the voice said. It sounded urgent for some reason. "Say something."
Steve's head was foggy, and his whole body in agony. He wanted to move, but his limbs felt too heavy and it was like he didn't know how.
He looked around. It was dark, but he could make out three walls and the metal bars making up the fourth one. For a few moments, he wasn't sure why he was in this place. Then it all came back to him. The ambush. The imprisonment. The interrogation.
He sucked in a deep breath, and a violent cough broke out of his throat, followed by a hot-white agony spreading through his chest. He couldn't stop a painful groan from escaping his dry, chapped lips.
"Hey, you awake, buddy? You good?" It took Steve a moment to place Richardson's voice.
"Yeah," Steve managed to croak, but his voice was barely audible. " 'm fine."
"Good to hear your voice, man," Lynch chimed in.
Too weak and in too much pain to even bother sitting up, Steve remained laying on the floor, his brain fishing for something important. There was something he wanted - no, needed to tell them both. He just couldn't remember what. It was all foggy and he could remember the pain, the beating, the water. But none of it mattered. It was something more important.
He shut his eyes close, trying to focus. There was Scarface, hurting him with gleaming satisfaction. Then there was Haddad, asking questions Steve couldn't answer, promising him to end the suffering if he talked. And then there was… "Al-Asmar," he said, opening his eyes, suddenly remembering the importance of that name.
"What about him?" Richardson asked.
"He's here. Or was here. I don't know."
"You sure?" There was a doubt in Lynch's voice. As though he wasn't sure if Steve had just hit his head enough to see things.
"I talked to him," Steve confirmed, certain of it. "Haddad is his guy."
"Ah, now that explains the hospitality of these guys," Richardson said. "The fucker got us before we got him."
"He said," Steve began, his mind working hard to put the pieces together. "He said he knew about us coming for him. That he knew about our every move before we even took it."
"You must be kidding me. Someone betrayed us?"
"Looks like it," Steve confirmed, anger bubbling in his veins with the thought.
"Son of a bitch!" Richardson bellowed. "I'll kill the bastard when I find out who had done that."
Steve opened his mouth to say something, but another coughing fit caught him off guard. This time a small amount of water came out of his mouth, which he knew wasn't good. The memory of water filling his lungs, of the inability to stop it, was now too vivid on his mind. The cough once again sent a spike of terrible pain through his broken ribcage, making him involuntarily cry out in agony.
"Shit, this has to end," Richardson said. "There has to be something we can do, right? I'm tired of those bastards knocking us around."
Steve was tired too. Exhausted. But no matter how hard he kept looking, he didn't see any opportunity of an escape. Not without help. "The phone," he said. "We need to get that phone. That's our only chance."
"How the hell you want to do that?" Lynch asked. "So far only one of them was dumb enough to have a phone when around us. And I haven't seen him for days anyway."
That was true. But Steve's only hope was the guard they were talking about would come back soon. And by then, he'd figure something out. Because if he didn't they were all as good as dead, whether their captors had intended it or not.
2 days later
This wasn't how Danny had imagined New Year's Eve.
It was supposed to be a nice and cheerful day spent with the ones he loved. He would cook dinner according to one of his mom's recipes, while Steve would try and mess with it, but he wouldn't let him. Grace and Charlie would spend some time with their uncle meanwhile, goofing around and Danny would watch them all, enjoying the family time. They would then head to Waikiki Beach, which would be the first time for Charlie, and enjoyed a midnight barrage of colorful salutes over the ocean, which would signal the start of the New Year. Maybe even Kono, Chin, Lou, and the rest of the ohana would join them.
Instead, his kids were with Rachel, Steve who-knew-where, alone and most likely suffering, and Danny stuck in the land full of enemies all around, with not many leads to his captured friend.
Both, Joe and Gutch had spent most of the last two days on their phones. To who they were talking, Danny had no idea. But they were certain they would find something out, and he didn't have a choice but to believe them.
Davis seemed to be recovering well, which was a miracle without a proper hospital. He was lucky Martinez had enough supplies and knew what he was doing. Despite the weakness, he tried to help as much as he could.
Good thing was, that Davis was able to help with the translation of the messages Five-0 had found in the phones. The bad news was, that so far it hadn't helped them much. The one thing they knew for sure was that Steve and others were taken to the safehouse at some point after their capture, but they've been transferred somewhere else long before their rescue team had arrived. Where to, Danny had no idea.
He was beginning to lose it. He was unable to think about anything else but how Steve was doing, whether he was still alive. Even if Joe was right, even if Steve was alive, it's been eleven days. Eleven days in the hands of an enemy, not knowing whether he'd ever get out. Danny didn't want to imagine the despair his friend must've been feeling. The uncertainty.
The sleep became elusive with the increasing worries for Steve's wellbeing. But he was trying to get a few hours of rest when someone shook him back to his senses. He woke up to Joe's voice saying his name.
"What? You got something?" Danny asked, trying not to get his hopes up. His heart skipped a beat when Joe nodded.
"I think so," he said. "Meeting in five. Wake up everybody."
Danny did as told, trembling with impatience and curiosity, wondering whether Joe had figured out where to find Steve.
"It's not much, but my contact gave me a name," Joe announced when everyone gathered around Davis, who lay on the thin mattress on the floor. "Kaseem al-Asmar."
Danny didn't miss the exchange of the looks between Martinez and Davis. A short, almost invisible glance that could be easily missed.
"Now, I don't know exactly who this guy is yet, but from what my contact was able to find out, he is pretty high in the food chain," Joe continued. "So my guess is that finding al-Asmar will get us some answers at least. Maybe he'll even lead us to the boys."
"Do we know anything about him at all?" Kono asked. "Did your contact say more?"
"She's working on it. I can ensure you it's high on her list of priorities and she'll let me know as soon as she knows something."
"She?" Chin teased.
"With all due respect, Sir," Martinez spoke. "But last time we acted on intel from an unknown person, one of my brothers nearly died for nothing."
"He's right, Joe," Danny agreed. "The least you can do is tell us who this mysterious woman is."
Now it was Joe's and Gutch's turn to exchange a look. Did Gutch know?
"She's not a stranger," Joe protested, but none of them seemed convinced. "She's with the agency. Got access to all kind of information we could use. And she's risking enough by sharing it with me, so I'd rather not reveal her ID."
Danny drew his brows, thinking. There was no reason for a CIA agent to risk her career for something like this. Not unless it was important for her too. And if she cared enough to get involved, Danny had a good guess. "It's Catherine, isn't it?" he blurted out.
"Who is Catherine?" Davis asked.
"Long story, brah," Kono said with a hint of a smile.
"No," Joe denied, keeping his face stoic. "But it doesn't matter. What matter is-"
"It does matter to us, Joe, damn it!" Danny barked out, unable to stop himself from raising the voice. He didn't mean to, but all the worry and stress along with lack of sleep were really getting to him.
Joe held Danny's gaze in silence, his face stoic.
"Tell them, Joe," Gutch chimed in. "It's not like anyone in this room would tell someone anyway."
"That's right. We just want them back and get the hell out of here as soon as possible," Davis said.
Joe sighed in defeat. "Doris," he said after a short pause. "Doris McGarrett."
"What? Steve's mom?" A surprise in Lou's widened eyes mirrored Danny's own. "Since when does she care?"
"Hang on. Mommy McGarrett is a CIA agent? That's pretty cool," Martinez said with a surprise obvious in his voice.
Danny bit his tongue to prevent himself from reacting to that. It took all his self-control not to yell it's anything but cool. To say that it was Steve's selfish mom who had ruined the childhood of her kids, who had managed to tear their family apart, who seemed to care more about the man who had kidnapped and tortured Steve two times, the man who had brought so much pain into Steve's life, than her own son.
"She always had," Joe defended her, answering Lou's question, ignoring Martinez's remark. "In her own way."
Danny scoffed at that.
"Look, it's all we have so far," Gutch said. "Without Doris's intel we have nothing but a bunch of photos and vague messages so we have no choice but to trust her, all right?"
Danny had to admit Gutch was right. They didn't have many options.
"So now what? Do we wait for her to find out more about this al-Asmar?" Chin asked.
"That might not be necessary," Danny said, noticing the confused looks on his friends' faces. He gestured toward the two SEALs with his hand. "I think these guys could tell us some more."
All the eyes in the room landed on Martinez and Davis.
"Why do you think we know?" Richardson said.
"You forget I'm a detective. I saw this look you two had exchanged and I can see if someone's lying to me. So spill the beans."
Davis shook his head. "Look, even if we knew, it's classified information. We can't-"
"The hell you can't!" Danny yelled, unable to hold it inside. He hated the word classified, especially if it was standing between him and Steve. "That man can be our best lead. He might know where three of your teammates, your brothers, are. So please, don't tell me you're not willing to tell us who this guy is if it is the only thing that can actually help us find them!"
A dead silence carried over the room. Danny could feel his hands trembling with anger. This would never work if they were withholding the essential information from each other.
"Danny," Chin began, sensing the danger.
"No, he's right," Gutch said, turning his gaze to the two SEALs. "I know you can't speak about it. But finding this man might be our only chance at finding them. And we need to know who we are after. You don't need to share the details. Just what's relevant for us to get them out. Please."
Tense silence carried over the room for a while. "Fine," Davis said eventually. "Al-Asmar calls himself a businessman, but he is the head of a fairly new and yet publicly unknown paramilitary organization. He doesn't abide by the rules and he's got some powerful friends in the government helping him cover his crimes."
"His group doesn't care about the body count," Martinez added. "Al-Asmar hates Americans and he'd made it his life mission to wipe out as many of us as he can, in any way possible."
Danny swallowed hard, listening carefully.
"He had taken prisoners before. Marines, Army, even reporters, and medical staff, he doesn't care," Davis kept talking. "Most of them were never seen again. Those who were found eventually… well, I'm pretty sure they wished for a quicker death."
Danny felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach, the intensity of his fears growing in his veins.
"If Joe is right, if al-Asmar really is involved," Davis said, his voice trailing. He shook his head and took a moment before continuing. "That man is a monster. God, I don't even want to imagine what he'd do to the boys if he knows who they are."
There was no doubt that whoever had them, knew who they were. It didn't help to ease Danny's anxiousness at all. All kinds of terrible images played in front of his eyes, and he struggled to push them out of his mind.
"You were after him, weren't you?" Kono asked the SEALS. They didn't answer, but they didn't have to. The looks in their eyes and their silence were enough of a confirmation.
"So you know where to find him?" Chin asked.
Martinez shook his head. "Not anymore. There is no way he'd stay put after that ambush."
Joe picked up the phone and walked away, leaving Danny wondering if it was Doris he was calling to. But even if so, it didn't matter as long as she was able to help them find the bastards who had Steve and others.
The rest of the day went in silence. Unable to do anything else but wait, Danny prayed Steve would hang on a little longer. Because he couldn't even imagine losing him.
Joe's phone rang again just a couple of minutes before midnight, shaking Danny into full awareness.
"Thanks, I'll keep you posted," Joe ended the phone call after a couple of minutes.
"So?" Danny asked, desperate for good news.
Joe turned around and met Danny's hopeful eyes. "We have the latest known location of al-Asmar," he said, barely able to contain the excitement in his voice. He glanced at his watch, then back up at Danny. "We're leaving in ninety minutes."
*to be continued*
The team is getting close, but the men's condition is deteriorating fast. Stay with me to see if they all make it till the rescue team arrives.
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