A/N: Steve and Danny in a fireworks warehouse. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 4 — A Minor Crisis
The tallest Asian man Danny had ever seen (not counting basketball player Yao Ming), apparently the warehouse foreman, was yelling at the scrambling workers in a mix of English and Chinese. He didn't seem overly alarmed about green and silver sparks flying through the air in a fireworks factory.
Looking closer, Danny saw it didn't seem as dangerous as it had at first. Perched on a stacker forklift pallet two McGarrett body lengths overhead, one bundle of a dozen roman candles was going off one candle at a time.
None of the other bundles with it seemed to be affected and the sparks were falling on bare concrete floor. If was almost a pretty display, but the workers were understandably nervous seeing sparks inside a fireworks warehouse. A red and green candle flared up just as the silver and green died down. The workers all flinched. The foreman cursed them — Danny didn't have to speak Chinese to understand that — then turned to the two newcomers.
"Could you come back later, sirs?" he said with rough politeness. "We're having a minor crisis."
"I can see that," Steve said officially. "McGarrett, Five-0." He flashed his badge and the workers began to mutter in alarm. "We're here on a routine post-earthquake check."
Danny eyed the bundle, now spitting blue and gold sparks from the elevated tines of the stacker forklift. "But this doesn't exactly look routine."
Introducing himself as Benjamin Hsieh, the foreman scratched his head. "This was caused more by stupidity than by the earthquake," he said. "Chang was shrink wrapping the bundles of candles when the earthquake struck and he dropped his heat gun on the fireworks. After the earthquake, he said nothing about the incident and finished his work, but the heat gun must have charred a bit of paper and caused a tiny fire that spread. Hwang was lifting up the bundles so they could be stacked with the rest, when it began spouting sparks. He ran away from the lifter and left it as you see. If Hwang would go back to his post," he sent a poisonous glare at one cowering worker. "We could get that bundle down and out of the shop, but he's scared to go back to the lifter."
While he was talking, the workers huddled closer behind him, muttering fearfully in Chinese.
Hsieh swung on them, yelling in Chinese. Danny thought he caught the words "shrink wrap" and "Five-0" and, was that "ice"? He glanced at his partner and saw Steve tense. So, it probably was "ice," or rather, "ICE."
"I think Lori's friend Morrison would be interested in this place," he said casually, referring to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent they'd met recently.
One corner of Steve's mouth lifted in a lopsided grin. "I'd say so." The Navy SEAL barked out a command in Mandarin.
The foreman and all the Chinese workers froze in shock. Steve and Danny smirked.
"Just because he doesn't look Chinese, doesn't mean he doesn't understand it," Danny pointed out.
Steve added something forcefully in Chinese, but no one was listening. The undocumented immigrants scattered, more afraid of cops than the fireworks or the foreman.
Steve was yelling that they weren't ICE and they didn't care about illegal workers, but in their panic, no one was listening. The workers scattered to hide among the stacks of fireworks, hoping to find a side door that wasn't locked. Hsieh, who would face the stiffest penalties, made a run for the main entrance. Steve pursued. Twice the size of his workers, the foreman plowed through the fleeing crowd, throwing a man at Steve to slow him down. Steve ducked his shoulder. The stumbling worker bounced off the commander and crashed into the forklift. The jostling made the Roman candle bundle rotate, until the sparks were aimed at the other bundles.
In all the excitement, no one noticed, not even Danny and he had the Roman candles on his mind. With workers running all around him, Danny kept his eye on one prize. He lunged and caught one particular man by his collar. "Stop right there, Hwang. You're going to move that forklift for us."
Danny thought Hwang understood English, though he only answered in Chinese. Or maybe the man only understood the word "forklift." Hwang pointed up.
"Oh shit!" Danny exclaimed.
Almost at the door, Hsieh grabbed a broom and threw it backwards. Steve caught it, reversed it and threw it like a javelin. The long wooden handle went between Hsieh's legs. The foreman tripped and landed hard on one knee, crying out in pain. Steve pounced on him, cuffed his hands behind him and hauled Hsieh to his feet. As they stood, they looked up and echoed Danny's exclamation in two different languages.
Before the four watchers could take another step, the other five Roman candle bundles burst into flame all at once. Fireworks blazing, parcels shot in all directions like, well, rockets.
Steve threw Hsieh to the ground again as one bundle zoomed over their heads and out the door, plowing across the gravel parking lot and fetching up against a block wall.
The original sputtering bundle nosedived at Danny's feet and he kicked it into a safe corner. One blazing package caught on the top of one of the stacker forklift's towers and spun like a pinwheel, showering Danny and Hwang with sparks. The men threw up their arms to protect their heads and dodged away.
Two bundles shot into the stacked pallets of consumer fireworks, trapping some of the fleeing workers. A man screamed as his sleeve caught fire. Steve abandoned his prisoner. Armed with the broom, he knocked the roman candles away from the stored fireworks, then beat out the flames on the whimpering worker's arm.
The final Roman candle bundle shot high in the air to lodge against the ceiling framework. It began to rain sparks on the professional fireworks stacked below.
Suddenly everything became a hundred times more dangerous. Made for amateur use, an exploding Roman candle might take a hand off, but the professional mortar shells could blow up the entire building!
"We've got to get out!" the foreman yelled. He struggled to rise, but he couldn't bend his swollen knee, so he couldn't stand without the use of his hands.
Steve and Danny could run for it, but there were twenty workers scattered around the building. They'd never be able to persuade them to come out of hiding in time.
Steve climbed the stack of fireworks boxes in two bounds but could see no way up to the source of the danger. The Roman candles were high and many sparks winked out before they landed on the professional fireworks below. Maybe it wasn't as dangerous as it looked at first, he thought hopefully, as he leaped to the next pile of plastic wrapped mortar shells.
No, it was worse.
Steve owed Danny an apology. The warehouse was (illegally) a factory. Half the shells Steve could see had fuses inserted, when they shouldn't be assembled until at the show site.
As Steve watched, a corner of paper burst into a tiny flame, like a cigarette lighter, and a shell fuse began to spark.
TBC
Oops, another cliffhanger! More fireworks next time. Literally.