Thank you everyone for your patience. I know that this chapter has taken a long time to write. I know have 2 kittens (5 months and 2 months) who want attention all the time and love to play on the key board.
I tried to remember the layout of Five-0 HQ as best I could. I'm sure that I've taken some liberties. I apologize for any inaccuracies.
Catherine surveyed her new work space. Her role in Naval Intelligence earned her a nice office with a large desk, dual monitors, and plenty of lockable cabinets. Best of all, the sensitive nature of her work required an actual lockable door.
"Lieutenant Rollins?" a young Ensign stood in the hallway, "I was asked to bring you these files. Captain Sumners asks that you look them over before the briefing at 10 hundred."
"Thank you," Catherine took the files and settled in to familiarize herself with the material. It dealt with black market shipments of arms from China into the United States. The investigation seemed near its end. She was a little surprised that she was being included in the investigation as the final raid was about to go down. She wasn't a field agent.
A footnote in one of the files caught Catherine's attention. It involved a crate of experimental new tasers. It was only a footnote because the crate had gone missing, not arriving with the rest of the shipment.
Catherine logged in with her security credentials. Pulling up everything she could find on Chinese tasers, Catherine began reading about an experimental three prong taser. After the crate of prototypes had been stolen, the project had been discontinued.
Heart pounding, Catherine started a search for all information on three prong taser burns. Leaving the information to compile, she left for the briefing.
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"So who did you talk to again?" Danny asked, shooting a suspicious look at Steve from the passenger seat of his own Camero.
"Her name was Sarah," Steve explained (again), "She said she was the Five-0 task force's administrative assistant."
"That's like a secretary, right?"
"I don't think you can call them that. I think it's considered rude," Steve sped up a little to sneak through a yellow light, ignoring the glare Danny aimed at him.
"What do you think she does?" Danny pondered.
"How should I know? I've never had an admin," Steve shrugged, "Paperwork and stuff, I guess."
"Paperwork?" Danny's head snapped up, "You mean someone else could have been doing all the paperwork? You could have hired someone to do that for us?"
"But I could never have found anyone as good at it as you," Steve reassured him.
Turning into the parking lot outside Five-0 HQ, Steve felt a flash of instinctive annoyance when he saw an SUV parked in his space before it hit him that it was no longer his space. He pulled into one of the visitor spots further down the row.
Danny didn't miss the shadow of pain on the former SEAL's face. He kept the conversation going to distract him, "It wouldn't matter if you did hire a secretary, she wouldn't stay more than a few days anyway."
Steve gave a small smile to acknowledge that he knew what Danny was doing as they got out of the car and headed into the building, "You've obviously failed to notice that women love being around me."
"Oh, I've noticed," Danny told him, "I've noticed that women think they would love being around you. If they really had to spend as much time with you, and you dismal approximation of a personality, as I have they would realize differently."
Once inside the building, the two men had to wait to be waved through the visitor's check point. There was an awkwardness in being checked over by the men they had walked past with a nod everyday for a year.
Danny held his breath when Steve stepped through the metal detector, but Steve had apparently listened to him for once and left all knives and guns at home.
"Well that was awful," Danny remarked very matter-of-factly as they walked up the stairs, visitor's badges on their shirts.
"I think it's about to get worse," Steve told him, pushing open one of the double doors that marked the entrance to Five-0 Headquarters.
They walked down the short hall, past the offices that had once belonged to Kono and Chin. When they reached the central room, they found that the tech table had been pushed towards one of the back corners. The front of the room was now cut off by a new desk. A very professional woman in her early thirties sat behind the desk and greeted them with the blank courtesy of high-end receptionists everywhere.
Steve actually flashed her a very charming smile, maybe still thinking a little about Danny's comments earlier, "Hello, I'm Steve McGarrett. I think you called me yesterday about getting my things?"
The icy look on her pretty face melted into a genuine welcome, "I'm Sarah Thompson." She rose and gestured down the hallway that led away from the central space and back towards the interrogation room. "I'll show you where we've stored everything from the offices." She led them to a large storage closet next to interrogation.
"You look terrible," she made a sad little moue at Steve, taking in all of his cuts and bruises, which were now a spectacular greenish/yellow color.
"I'm fine," Steve assured her, "Danny can help me move stuff."
Danny was certain the little blond would have stayed to fuss over Steve but she was interrupted when a man called her name.
"Captain Crosby is back," Sarah apologized. "I'll check back as soon as I can, just in case you need anything."
Left alone, Steve and Danny turned to survey the boxes.
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Rachel put down her cell phone and sighed. She had just finished her daily phone call to Grace and it was barely 9 a.m. She didn't start her new job until next week. She had already packed up everything from Stan's house that she was allowed to take. The real estate agent who would be helping them find a new place to live wasn't available until tomorrow.
Rachel's thoughts wondered back to the financial spreadsheets she had look at briefly the night before. Getting involved in a dangerous investigation was not high on her to-do list. Still, after seeing how hard everyone was working last night, Rachel felt like she should contribute, too. She didn't have Danny's burning desire to see justice done, but she did have an equally strong desire to help Danny, and, by extension, his ohana.
Rachel settled herself behind the desk in the study. Steve had told her that it would be fine if she worked there. She turned on the laptop, telling herself that she would spend a little time with this, and then go outside to enjoy the beach.
Five hours later, she finally turned off the computer. Her heart was racing and her hands were shaking. Combining the info Danny had gathered with data that Catherine had provided gave Rachel a list of transactions organized by unit, date, and currency amount. She had no way of knowing what the units were – they might be individual people, companies, or even terrorist cells.
What she did know was that, while the dates started about 6 years ago, the final transaction was set for tomorrow. Something was going to happen tomorrow and it didn't seem likely that it wouldn't be happening in Hawaii. Rachel needed to let Danny and Steve know about this right away.
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I can't believe how much of this stuff is broken," Danny was outraged on his friend's behalf, "You should sue for damages. Hell, you should sue for wrongful arrest and the fact that you were almost killed twice while in police custody."
When Steve failed to respond to his suggestions, Danny turned his attention away from a box of broken ship models. Steve was padding silently down the hall. He waved a hand to indicate that Danny should wait a minute.
Danny stayed in the storage room, half expecting to hear some kind of commotion as Steve did something incredibly stupid. Instead, Steve slipped easily back through the door a few minutes later.
"Page is here, I heard his voice," Steve explained.
"Did you hear what they were talking about?" Danny asked, going against his own better judgment.
Steve shook his head, "They went into Crosby's office."
The thoughtful look on Steve's face concerned Danny, "I want to know what they're talking about just as much as you do, but we not going to do something ill-considered." He hefted one of the boxes and passed it to Steve, relieved when his partner took it. "Let's grab your stuff and get out of here."
Steve nodded. It would take them a couple of trips to get everything. As visitors, they didn't have access to the back staircase or the freight elevator. That meant they would have to walk past Crosby's office, with its large windows, repeatedly. Steve wondered how that would go over.
He never found out. Just before he and Danny would have rounded the corner into the common space, Steve heard a sudden high-pitched squeak. He stopped silently and Danny did the same. In unspoken agreement, the pair returned to the storage room, shutting the door behind them.
"I think that was the admin," Steve whispered, "She sounded scared."
"Maybe she saw a spider. Maybe she's hoping that you'll come rescue her," Danny suggested, but he was whispering, too.
Steve shook his head, "If it was something like that then she would have made more noise. It doesn't feel right."
"We need to take a look but once we step around the corner we're sitting ducts. We don't even have any weapons," Danny's frustration could be heard in his voice.
"I have an idea," Steve was rummaging through the boxes as quietly as possible. He held up a small shatter proof mirror he had kept in his office in case he had need to shave. "We can extend this around the corner at floor level. Without the tech table in the center of the room, we should be able to see something."
Danny watched Steve's back, just in case someone decided to come up the stairs behind them, while Steve very slowly set the mirror on the floor and slid it around the corner. The seconds seemed to drag on forever. Danny desperately wanted to ask if Steve could see anything but he didn't dare make any noise. After an eternity, Steve pulled the mirror back and gestured for Danny to follow him back to the storage room.
The look on Steve's face told Danny that something was very wrong even before spoke, "Wo Fat is in Crosby's office."
"What?" It came out too loudly. Danny forced himself to whisper, "Wo Fat is here? Right now? Here in Crosby's office with Crosby and Page?"
"I could see Page, Crosby, Sarah, Wo Fat, and 3 of Wo Fat's men in Crosby's office. There are at least 2 more men in the outer office, covering the doors. I'd bet there are more in the back stairway."
Danny's mind was racing, "That's a lot of bad guys. I hate to admit it but I'm not having any brilliant ideas on how to handle this." He gave Steve a challenging look, "We need back-up – a lot of back-up."
Steve had pulled his cell phone out of pocket. He poked at it for a few seconds before giving Danny an apologetic look, "It's jammed. Looks like you're the back-up."
"Of course I am," Danny mumbled, "Why would Wo Fat risk coming here? Does he really think he can get away with killing 2 governors in less than a week?"
"We need to hear what's happening in there," Steve decided, "Come on – I have an idea." He lifted a set of lock picks out of one of the boxes and started to ease the door open, but Danny gestured for him to wait.
Danny grabbed a box of broken glass. Apparently searching Steve's office had required HPD to smash the longboards that had been in his refrigerator. Then someone had thoughtfully swept the mess into a box for him.
Danny passed Steve the neck of a bottle that now ended in jagged pieces before selecting on for himself. "Not the most elegant weapon by better than nothing."
"I can work with this," Steve assured him with a very scary smile.
Out in the hallway, Steve used the lock picks to very quickly and quietly open the door to the equipment closet. So quickly, in fact, that Danny suspected he had practiced for just this occasion. While Danny was imagining his partner spending late nights alone at HQ preparing for the day he would have to protect a high level official from a crime lord in his own office, Steve scooped up a small but powerful microphone with an earpiece and the toolbox.
He headed farther down the hall to the Five-0 locker room. Ignoring Danny's questioning look, Steve went directly into one of the curtained shower stalls.
Frustrated with not being able to see what Steve was doing in the small stall, Danny began to fidget, "There's really only one thing most men do alone in the shower and we don't have time for that right now."
Steve gave him the familiar you-are-not-amusing glare, "This shower is opposite the one in my private bathroom – the one I got for being in charge. They share plumbing. I took the shower head off and threaded the microphone through."
"So now we have ears on the empty bathroom next to the office we're interested in. Congratulations Commander!"
"The door latches badly. You have to slam it extra hard. It's open most of the time. This microphone is Intelligence grade equipment and the shower should amplify sound. We'll hear something."
"Okay then Super Seal, what are they saying now?" Danny was clearly skeptical about this plan.
Steve spent a few seconds fiddling with the earpiece before flashing Danny a triumphant smirk. He turned the volume up as loud as possible and held it between them.
Danny almost made a joke about being in the tiny shower stall with Steve but once he heard the tinny voices coming over the receiver he became all business.
". . . will be here tomorrow. Pat Jameson was supposed to make all the arrangements. Now, it's your responsibility to make sure that everything works out in my favor."
"Wo Fat?" Danny mouthed. Steve nodded.
"I told you before that I won't help you," Page snapped.
Steve and Danny exchanged a startled look – Governor Page had been in contact with Wo Fat.
"And I told you that my next warning would be bloodier," Wo Fat hissed, "I normally prefer to use more subtle methods but I'm on a tight schedule right now. I would have thought that Detective Kidman's very bloody death would have shown you how vulnerable you are. Or did you think that I didn't orchestrate that?"
"Doug had a wife and three kids," Darren Crosby's voice was strangled with emotion.
"Then he really should have chosen a safer line of work."
Wo Fat's callously dismissive reply was apparently more than Crosby could stand. Steve and Danny heard Crosby unleash a guttural cry. There were the sounds of a scuffle followed by several gunshots.
Even though Danny had been standing between Steve and the locker room door, the ex-SEAL used some sort of stealth ninja move to beat him to the hallway. Steve raced towards Crosby's office, but Danny ran smack into one of Wo Fat's men. He had been standing guard in the back stairway and was also responding to the sound of gunfire. Before the mercenary could bring his gun up, Danny jammed the jagged end of the bottle into the man's shoulder. The gun hit the ground and the goon hit the wall when Danny spun him around by his injured arm.
The interrogation room was conveniently located just a few steps down the hall. Danny tossed the wounded man inside, taking a second to grab a backup gun from his ankle holster.
"You should put pressure on that," Danny advised, "You could bleed out."
The sound of more gunfire reminded him that he didn't have time to spend with this idiot. Fortunately, the interrogation room door locked from the outside. Danny snagged the first gun from the floor, giving himself two weapons, and rushed after his partner.
Steve, meanwhile, burst out into the bullpen without pausing. The only real advantage he had was surprise and he needed to make the most of it. He stabbed the bottle neck directly into the throat of the first guard, killing him before he could even register Steve was there.
The second guard squeezed off two shots but they went wild when Steve shoved the dead body into him. Steve followed up with two well placed punches and the fight was over.
Snatching up both guns from the floor, Steve ducked behind the tech table for cover. Danny joined him there seconds later.
Steve knew that he had gotten lucky. If any of the bad guys in the office had wanted to take a shot at him, he'd be dead now. The only reason no one had noticed the guards going down was because all hell was breaking loose in the small room.
Sarah was on her knees, screaming. There was blood on her but not a lot and Steve didn't think any of it was hers. One of Wo Fat's men was clutching his side and bleeding heavily. He seemed about to collapse. The other two goons were pointing guns at Crosby and Page. The Governor was pointing a gun at Wo Fat. Crosby was unarmed and seemed to be favoring his right arm. There was blood on his sleeve but not an alarming amount.
Steve had a clear shot at Wo Fat but he didn't dare take it while the other men had guns on the Governor.
"We have to get in there," Steve informed Danny, his tone urgent, "On three – you go for the guy with the goatee, I'll take out the other one."
"And hopefully Page puts a bullet in Wo Fat," Danny added as he prepared himself to attack.
It might have worked that way, if Sarah hadn't chosen to climb to her feet and stagger forward just as Steve was kicking in the door in. It hit her, sending her flying into Page, who unintentionally fired off a round. The bullet went wild but still embedded itself in Wo Fat's left hip.
Steve tackled Page (and in the process Sarah) to get him out of the line of fire. Crosby sprang forward to defend the Governor but, in the confined space of the office, he unwittingly collided with Danny, knocking them both into one of Wo Fat's men, sending all three to the floor.
A moment of complete chaos ensued as everyone tried to get to safety. Wo Fat's remaining guard dragged the injured crime lord out of the office and around to the far side of the reception desk. The second guard crawled out from under Danny and followed them. The man with the wounded side had collapsed. He wasn't moving.
Steve and Danny urgently shoved Page out of the office, guiding him towards the back staircase. Several more of Wo Fat's men, who must have been covering the front door, arrived to surround the bloodied criminal.
Steve tried to provide cover fire for the Governor, but Sarah was clinging desperately to his right arm. Danny was in front with Page, leaving Crosby to squeeze off a few shots. Unfortunately, his earlier injury forced him to shoot with his off hand. All the shots went wild.
Danny led the way towards the safety of the back stairway only to find himself face-to-face with several more of Wo Fat's men, who were, in turn, being pursued by several members of HPD.
Frantic to stay out of the crossfire, Steve, Danny, Page, Crosby, and the terrified admin ducted through the closest door and found themselves trapped in the break room.
Only 2 more chapters left. Next time we'll see who can do a better job of keeping the Governor safe - Steve McGarrett and his team or Darren Crosby and his team.