Okay, as promised for all you angst fans, here's chapter four. Until now (I hope!) the story has been pretty light hearted. But things are about to get a lot more serious.

I hope you enjoy this latest chapter, and thank you again for your encouraging reviews :o)

Calculated Risk - Chapter Four

Hunter, Hunted

Danny had spotted them the first time. Two days earlier, before that deadly shootout on Waikiki. Within minutes of leaving the Palace, as Steve headed towards the Pali, he spotted them again. Different cars, of course. A Yakuza hit squad would never make the mistake of using any car twice. But the tactics were unmistakeable. Two synchronised vehicles, taking it in turns to follow them.

Two different cars. The same deadly threat. And his hand was already unclipping his holster.

"We've got company. Tag-tail, black sedan, followed by a grey SUV."

Turning instinctively to identify the threat for themselves, Steve, Don and Colby unclipped their guns too – all four of them feeling the familiar buzz of adrenalin that helped to keep them alive. Whatever this hit squad had in mind, they'd be ready for it, and… what the hell?

Swerving instinctively to avoid the van that now loomed ahead of them, Steve cursed in realization that came deadly seconds too late. They'd been so occupied with watching two vehicles that none of them had considered a third.

By the time they recovered, they were surrounded, penned in by a classic and deadly ambush – all instinctively diving for cover as gunfire raked through their windows, showering them in glass. Any kind of movement was going to expose them to a deadly rain of bullets, but they had no choice. If they stayed put, they were sitting ducks. If they could get outside, at least they could fight back.

Four doors flew open, and four bodies tumbled into the meagre space that their cover provided – surreal relief that they weren't in the Camaro flashing through Danny's mind now as he hit the ground. For one thing, he loved that car. More crucially, the SUV's size gave him far better protection.

It was one hell of a mess, of course, its doors and flanks already riddled with impacts of battle, but – no, as he flashed the briefest of glances around him, he thanked God that it was still in one piece.

Years of training from three sources, the police, the FBI, and military special forces kicked in now – melding together into synchronised teamwork as Steve, Don, Colby and Danny returned fire. That teamwork provided vital, life-saving strength. But it wasn't enough. Still wasn't enough.

Their attackers weren't just trying to kill them. They had a mission too. An equally horrific agenda. Through the unlikeliest factors of sunlight and human genetics, they'd now found their target. Blond hair made him unmistakeable. His position, closest to them, made him cruelly vulnerable.

From nowhere, a fourth vehicle, a side-doored van, crashed into the fray, and a swarm of masked figures flew out of it – using every second's benefit of 'where-the-hell-did-they-come-from?' confusion to find him. Even when he took two of that human swarm out, it kept coming, unstoppably, straight towards him – every self defence trick that Danny Williams knew no match, at all, for what he now faced. Four against one. However furiously he fought against them, there was only going to be one winner.

Pinned down by relentless gunfire, there was nothing that Steve, or Don, or Colby could do to stop it. All Steve could do was scream, in helpless fury and frustration, as he watched his partner go down.

"Danny! Danny, noooooo!"

Another volley of bullets flew past him, one of them grazing his arm, forcing him to duck down again. But he didn't feel its pain. The only thing that his senses registered was a final yell of defiance. The sight of his now unconscious partner being dragged towards the van behind him, and thrown roughly inside it. The sound of tyres burning themselves into the road, throwing up a haze of smoke from the speed of their escape. His own voice, rising in another desperate but pointless yell.

"Danny, no! No!"

Then silence.

Complete and utter silence.

By the time the dust settled, it was all over. The black sedan and the SUV were nowhere to be seen. The van, too, that had blocked them so expertly, had also vanished into a labyrinth of sidestreets. From start to finish, timed to sickening perfection, the ambush had lasted less than five minutes.

Still shaken by the speed and brutality of its assault, Don and Steve then froze in horror.

When they'd last seen their partners, both had been struggling against several assailants. With a suddenness that had made Steve's blood run cold, Danny had gone down first, hit by the same stun guns that had knocked him out before – Colby's desperate attempt to reach him typically brave and selfless, but ended by the same brutality.

With savage efficiency, Noshimuri's hit squad had achieved its objective. Taken his dreaded revenge. Felled by those tazers, and God knew what else it had taken to subdue him, Danny was gone. In the hands of a ruthless enemy. So was Colby.

The first to recover, Don now pulled out his phone. Calling Charlie. Calling for crucial help. Steve, though, sank down in shock beside him. This wasn't happening, it just wasn't happening. But it was. It had. The nightmare that Steve McGarrett had dreaded had come brutally true. Now all he could do was sit there, Danny's futile yells of defiance still ringing in his ears – defiant words from a different time returning, at this cruellest moment, to haunt his conscience.

'I am not getting myself killed for your vendetta!'