A/N: Oh ye of little faith… like I would let Thule win the day! Danny has more to come, but I thought it would be a bit unrealistic of him to conquer all the Russians single-handedly, Die-Hard-style, so I needed to put him in a situation that seemed more plausible.

...

For ten seconds, Steve was both blind and deaf.

Vision returned first, in the form of tilting shapes and dark, off-color figures in a misshapen, lopsided world. Slower was his hearing, which began as a faint ringing and built into a frenzied roar, broken by muffled shouts and gunshots

Someone turned the water off. Other hands seized him and picked him up, pulling him out of the stall. Steve had no energy left to fight and hung limply in their grasp until they deposited him on a dry, warm bit of the locker room floor. He was vaguely aware of someone unlocking his handcuffs and draping a towel around his shoulders. He shook his head drunkenly, trying to clear the distorted sights and sounds as he shivered in the cool air. Noises echoed hollowly between his ears and a high-pitch whine pervaded the background, exasperating the headache that had begun to throb painfully behind his eyes.

"Commander?"

Steve blinked, unsure where to focus.

"Commander McGarrett?" the voice asked again.

"Y-yeah?" Steve managed.

"The paramedics are here to…." but the rest of the sentence was lost as his hearing faded out again. Steve nodded briefly in answer to the man's question- whatever it was- and the next moment found himself lying on a stretcher. Someone wrapped a soft blanket around his soaking-wet body, then tucked a foil blanket over it. Another person buckled the straps and cinched them tight. They rolled him through the hallways and carried him down the steps to the front lawn where an ambulance waited with the engine running.

Steve kept his eyes closed. The rush of florescent lights overhead only made him feel nauseous and compounded his headache. Outside it was nearly dark and a few stars were scattered overhead. Steve cracked one eye open, then shut it quickly when the gurney bumped over the curb onto the parking lot asphalt. He resented the gentle rocking movement as the gurney was loaded into the back of the ambulance and groaned softly under his breath. The slightly-addled feeling from the stun grenade after his ordeal would only pass with sleep and time, and Steve was certainly looking forward to the sleeping part.

A moment later, the sirens blared and the ambulance raced away.

...

Danny pounded down the hallway as the unknown Russian man counted down in the earpiece that Danny clutched to one ear. He heard the shouts, the bang, and the gunshots and faltered for a moment. Was Steve alive? Pressing the piece against his ear, he strained to hear some sound from his partner, any indication that he was alive.

He heard soldiers. Shouts. Russian and English babbling together.

Crunch.

Danny jerked away at the loud noise. When he tried again, all he heard was static.

Someone had stepped on it.

Danny ran on.

"Sir! Stop!" A soldier moved to intercept him as Danny approached the locker room door. "You can't go in there."

"The hell I can't," Danny said and tried to push past him.

The next moment, he was lying on the ground with one arm twisted behind his back. "I've got him, sir," the man said into his radio. "The detective you wanted. Short, button-up, blond hair?"

Danny couldn't hear the response and struggled to turn around so he could at least see the locker room doors, but the man held him tight, trapping his head against the floor facing the opposite direction.

"Yes sir." Pause. "No sir, not yet."

Danny heard the doors open and shut as men moved in and out of the space behind him. One was screaming in Russian. Orders were barked. Things were moved. Something clanged against the door frame.

"You want me to hold him here, sir?"

"Is that Thule?" Danny demanded, still struggling. "You tell that bastard to let me go so I can find my partner."

"They've just finished," the soldier said, ignoring him. There came another pause and the muffled noise of instructions. "Understood, sir." Then, abruptly, he stood up and finally released Danny.

The detective jumped to his feet, irately brushing the dust from his clothes. "Well? Can I go, or are you going to try to break my arm again?"

"You're free to go, sir," the soldier said and stepped aside with no other explanation. Danny stared at him and opened his mouth to deliver a sharp rant, but thought better of it. Steve needed him. Moving around the soldier, he hurried to the door and pulled it open.

Inside, chaos reigned. Pieces of chipped and broken tile, shell casings, and debris littered the floor of the locker room and showers. The ground was slick with a mixture of water and dark streaks of blood where the wounded or dead had been dragged from the room. Soldiers were everywhere, securing prisoners and carrying the wounded away.

Danny stepped cautiously through the mess, his heart racing as he eyed the blood. "Steve?" he called. "Steve, you here?"

Of course Steve wasn't there. Danny guessed that, but he checked anyway, just to make sure. He looked in every stall and behind every curtain and every door. On the ground in the locker room, he saw a pile of plastic wrappers from medical equipment. Someone had been tended to by paramedics and then taken away in an ambulance, he reasoned, but was it Steve? Danny grabbed a passing soldier and asked, but the man was clueless as to where Steve had been taken or even who he was.

Another soldier was more helpful: a man had been taken away by paramedics on a stretcher, he said. Where, he didn't know, but it was at least a start.

Frustrated (and unwilling to wait for Thule to reappear and possibly detain him), Danny returned upstairs to the lobby. The best thing he could do, Danny decided, was to take a guess where Steve was headed and try to follow. After waging a brief internal battle, he decided Queen's was the most likely destination. Fishing in his pocket for Steve's truck keys, he climbed into the vehicle at the back of the lot and took off after them.

...

"Sir?" A gloved hand prodded his shoulder gently. "Are you awake?"

Steve nodded briefly.

"Can you open your eyes for me?" The short, dark-haired paramedic in the back of the ambulance smiled as Steve gingerly cracked his eyes open a few seconds later. "Hi there. My name's Sara."

"Hi," Steve grunted. He winced as the ambulance hit a pothole.

"How's the head?" she asked, slipping a blood pressure cuff around his arm.

"Uh… dizzy," Steve responded after a moment. "Flash bangs."

"Multiple?" she asked in surprise.

"Two."

Sara jotted something on her tablet, then returned her attention to the blood pressure cuff. "You were exposed to tear gas?" she asked as the cuff inflated.

"Yeah," Steve closed his eyes and felt a faint burning from trace amounts of the chemicals. "It's not bad anymore, though." The cuff tightened around his arm, then released slowly with a hiss. He kept his eyes closed as she removed it and heard her typing again, her nails clicking against the tablet's screen.

"Any trouble breathing?"

"No."

That wasn't quite truthful- the beating he had received had left him with sore ribs and painful bruises across much of his upper body. Although nothing appeared to be broken (Sergei intentionally planned on prolonging the agony, Steve figured), the result of the physical abuse was a deep ache that began deep in his chest and pulsed outward with every breath. But Sara seemed to believe him. She took his pulse, temperature, attached sticky pads and leads to his chest, and typed a few more notes onto the tablet. The ambulance rattled away over the rough, heat-stricken roads toward the ER, with Steve wincing on every bump and jolt.

pop pop pop

Steve's eyes shot open. He knew that sound. Stifling a groan, he tried to sit up.

"Sir, please don't!" Sara exclaimed, rushing to hold him back. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to… see outside…" Steve grunted. He fumbled for the straps holding him to the gurney, but Sara grabbed his hands to stop him.

"Sir, you really need to lay down," she said emphatically. "Why do you need to see outside?"

"Gunshots."

There was no doubt a second later when one of the bullets struck the rear of the vehicle with a dull thump. Sara stifled a surprised cry and took a quick peek out the window.

"What do you see?" Steve asked, quickly unfastening the straps around his chest and legs with his good hand.

"Uh… There's a van." Her voice wavered, then strengthened again. "It's dark, maybe blue? Looks like a man leaning out the passenger side is shooting."

"Can you see the weapon?"

"No. It's too dark outside. Sorry."

Steve waved off her apology and forced himself into a sitting position. "Got any weapons in here?" he asked, already knowing the answer. His eyes roved the back of the vehicle, searching for something useful. Maybe the oxygen canister? But he needed more time to make that idea work. Plus, Danny always had a fit whenever Steve MacGyvered something together.

Sara had other concerns. "You shouldn't be sitting up," she said, worriedly monitoring his vitals and distinctly unhappy to see his heart rate spiking.

Steve grunted. He lurched and fell into a reclined position on the gurney as the ambulance sped up suddenly and began to swerve, apparently in an attempt to lose their pursuers. As a stream of bullets struck the back and side of the vehicle, he and Sara both winced, ducking when the window glass was shattered.

"Get on the floor!" he shouted, neatly pulling out his IV and sliding off the gurney, pulling her with him onto the floor. He felt Sara flinch as a series of bullets struck the side of the vehicle. "You okay? You hit?"

"I'm fine," she gasped. "Just… surprised." She was shaking.

The ambulance turned sharply, sending both of them sprawling and dumping what loose supplies there were off the shelves. As Steve tried to pick himself up, a loud bang and jolt announced one of their tires had been shot. The ambulance swerved, wavered, and suddenly stopped, crashing into something outside. Steve fell sideways into the gurney while Sara was thrown against one of the cabinets.

When the movement finally ceased, he sat up cautiously.

ding ding ding

A fresh barrage of bullets battered the outside of the ambulance. Steve crawled across the floor toward the canister of oxygen in one corner, trying to avoid the shattered glass and sharp debris. "Sara?" he asked as he worked to unstrap the tank and lower it to the floor. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she responded shakily. "Just not my usual day at work."

"Can you reach any gauze? And tubing, I need tubing."

pop ding ding pop

The shots were closer now, shattering the glass on the second window in the back of the ambulance. Steve ducked as a few stray pieces scraped his cheek. How long do I have? Steve wondered as he worked. Seconds, probably. A minute if he were lucky. Certainly not enough time to make a small bomb, but it wouldn't stop him from trying.

Hoping to buy himself a few minutes more, he looped a rope and some medical tubing around the door handles and cinched it tight. It wouldn't buy them much; maybe a minute, max. He returned his attention to the O2 canister. "Hand me that tape?" he asked, pointing to a roll that had fallen to the floor.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she crawled across the floor with the tape.

"Making a bomb. I hope." Wrapping tape around the tubing, he reached for the tank nozzle but suddenly stopped. "Shh. Hear that?" Steve's voice dropped to a whisper. It was suddenly very quiet outside. The bullets had stopped.

"They've stopped shooting," Sara observed.

Steve nodded. He worked faster.

A moment later, they heard heavy footsteps approaching the truck. The doors rattled as someone yanked at them, but the binding around the handles held strong.

Steve stared at his half-finished bomb. He didn't have time to complete it. He needed a weapon and he needed it now.

Thump

Something heavy and metal clanged against the handles outside. They were trying to break in. Pulling himself upright, Steve searched desperately around the interior of the truck. "Where's a scalpel?" he whispered hastily to Sara. "Or a knife? Anything sharp."

She opened a drawer and thrust a scalpel in a sealed baggie into his hands. Gesturing for her to hide, Steve ripped open the bag, gripped the scalpel tightly, and crouched at the rear, next to the doors.

Thump.

Steve balanced precariously on his good leg and braced for a fight. His other leg throbbed furiously and his chest stung where the sticky leads had been ripped off.

Thump.

In his periphery, Steve saw Sara crouch behind the gurney, a scalpel of her own clenched in her shaking fist.

Crack.

The bindings around the handle fell to the floor as the handle collapsed. A moment later, the doors flew open, but there was no one for Steve to fight.

Instead, blinding light filled the back of the ambulance. Steve threw up a hand against the glare and blinked, trying to make out the figures in the darkness outside. The only person he could see clearly, however, was a frightened young man, the ambulance driver, bound and kneeling in the grass at the edge of the shadows. A black gloved hand rested on his shoulder and a gun was pressed to his head.

For Steve, the meaning was clear:

Surrender or he dies.

Steve surrendered.

A/N: got in really late last night and have to work tonight... Sorry for the delay! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!