Chapter 5 – Burn, Baby, Burn

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.

With a cry that mixed fury with fear, Steve leaped headlong, disappearing from Danny's view and smothering the flame with his body. He snatched a knife from his pocket and cut the fuse, throwing it off the pallet pile.

Danny saw the fuse fall, still spitting sparks. He stamped it out, swearing, then shouted, "Steve!"

"I've got it covered for now!" his partner yelled back. His body literally covered all the fuses he could see, protecting them from the falling sparks. He covered his head and neck with his arms, but still felt pricks of pain as the embers drifted down. "But hurry! It's getting warm up here!"

Danny's eyes swept the factory. All the bundles were still merrily spitting sparks, but the only ones in dangerous positions were the one above Steve and the one on top of the forklift post.

Danny turned back and saw the forklift driver fleeing as fast as he could. Cursing, Danny yelled at the foreman, "How long do these things last?"

They had chambers that fired off one by one to keep the fireworks alive, but Hsieh didn't bother to explain. "Four minutes! Guaranteed four minutes!" he yelled back.

Four minutes seemed an eternity. As Danny ran for the forklift platform, he caught a glimpse of the roman candles' name, "Burn, Baby, Burn!"

"Not today!" the detective told it defiantly.

He grabbed up the broom and, ignoring the sparks that fell around him, he hit the bundle off the post as if it was a piñata, then used his best slap shot to knock it into the safe corner of the warehouse with the other candles.

"Goal!" Danny muttered, then shouted, "Hang on, Steve!"

Danny leaped onto the forklift platform and drove forward, lowering the prongs to slot into the pallet's base. He'd only worked on the tractor-like forklifts. This was a stacker, with a platform to stand on and two tall towers that could lift loads to high shelves, but the controls weren't so different. The machine lurched forward.

"Thank you, Uncle Phil," he muttered. He'd spent two summers driving forklifts and shifting boxes at his uncle's shipping warehouse. He hadn't lost the knack.

Steve felt the world shift. Another damned aftershock? Then with a jolt, the pallet began to move away from the shower of sparks. OK, earthquakes didn't move like that. He risked a peek out from under his protecting arms and saw Danny backing the forklift away from the glittering rain, which now fell harmlessly on the concrete floor.

Clear of the falling sparks, Steve sat up on his moving magic carpet.

"Is that a bottle of water, Danny?"

The detective plucked the almost full plastic bottle out of a makeshift cup holder.

"You thirsty?" Danny asked, as he tossed it to his friend.

Steve caught it easily, uncapped it and dribbled water on every charred spot until he was pretty sure nothing was going to catch fire. Then he splashed the rest of the water on the back of his neck and arms.

By then, Danny had placed the pallet well away from any other fireworks, just in case a thermal reaction was gaining speed somewhere deep in the black powder.

While Steve climbed down, Danny studied his friend's back. "Your shirt has leopard spots and your neck looks like you crashed a mosquito convention."

Steve examined his red-spotted arms.

"Or maybe you're coming down with the measles," Danny suggested.

Which was pretty much what it looked like, Steve had to admit.

"They're just little first degree burns," the Navy SEAL said.

"Itty bitty sunburns?"

"You could say that," Steve agreed. "I just need a little sunburn lotion and they'll be fine."

"It's a good thing you weren't closer to those Roman candles," Danny said soberly. "Or you'd have been barbecued."

HPD was swamped. The earthquake had caused a variety of accidents, encouraged looters by breaking shop windows and created general havoc. When Chin and Kono escorted their artifact thief into the squad room, officers were leading two battered men into holding.

"I told you that tree was top heavy," ranted a man with a split lip and a torn shirt.

"I didn't knock it over, the earthquake did!" the man with the black eye yelled.

"It wouldn't have fallen if you'd trimmed it!"

The Five-0 duo set Lindquist out of the way and waited for their turn at booking.

Sgt. Duke Lukela felt like he was back directing traffic, sending men here and there, trying to answer phones where all the lights were flashing. When everything was momentarily sorted, he dropped wearily into a chair beside Chin and mopped his face with the back of his hand.

"Crazy day," Kono said sympathetically.

"You don't know the half of it. We don't know the half of it. Our switchboard is overwhelmed. People are telling us they've been calling for an hour."

"Why don't you hook into the Five-0 board," Chin suggested. "Lori's at headquarters. She can help you coordinate."

Duke looked as if Chin had offered him cool lemonade after a long day at the beach.

"Would you do that? Could you do that?" he begged.

"No problem, brah," Chin said. "If we can book our suspect."

Duke was willing to trade. Lori was willing to help.

After the emergency generator kicked in. Lori called the governor, getting Five-0's request for repairs in before the rest of the government offices did. Then all she could do was stand guard and answer the infrequent calls from her teammates.

Answering HPD's calls would give her something to do. She hated feeling useless.

Having made Lori happy and Duke ecstatic, Chin and Kono walked out of HPD into the parking garage where Kono's little red Cruze waited.

They met up with an officer helping a suspect out of the back of a police car. Handcuffed behind his back, the long-limbed, gangling youth made a sharp contrast with the hefty Hawaiian officer. The round-faced, heavily built officer was well known to Chin and Kono, because he was one of their many cousins on the police force.

"Aloha, Art, what you got, brah?" Chin greeted his relative.

"Aloha, Chin, I mean, lieutenant," Art answered, trying to remain professional in front of the suspect. "Aloha, Officer Kalakaua."

"Officer Arakawa," Kono answered with a nod, matching her cousin's formality.

"This is just a looter, snatch and grab artist. Fast bugger. I'd've never caught him if he hadn't run into a couple of good citizens who grabbed him for me."

"You'd have never caught me if it hadn't been for those haoles," the kid said scornfully.

"You'd've been caught eventually," Art answered placidly. "You ain't as smart as you think you are."

The youth answered back insolently, but Art ignored his sass and towed him toward the HPD entrance by the scruff of his neck.

As Chin and Kono reached her car, an aftershock struck. The first sharp jolt threw Chin into the side of the Cruze and made Kono grab for the car's wing mirror.

Officer Arakawa stumbled, but his suspect kept his feet with the grace of an athlete. The looter planted his skinny shoulder in the officer's substantial gut and shoved. Art fell headlong, cracking his head on a concrete pillar.

The Five-0 pair yelled "Stop!" in unison, but the suspect didn't. (They never did. Danny could have told them that.)

The athletic perp jumped and tucked, swinging his cuffed hands forward as if he was jumping rope backwards. With his hands now in front, he thumbed his nose at the Five-0 officers who were just getting their footing back. The youth leaped into the driver's seat of Art's patrol car and pealed out.

TBC