A/N: Well everyone, it's a bit of a snowy gloomy day up here in Canada, and so I think productivity on this story should be my goal for the day. Here is another chapter for you to enjoy, no matter what the weather where you are, and stay tuned for more on a weekly basis as I'm nearly finished writing this story and so chapters should be more regular until the end of it all.
Chapter 22: A Knock At The Door
Doris walked into the bullpen, flanked by two heavily armed men. Catherine, Toast and Charlie stopped to stare at the returning mother, just as Duke came out of one of the offices and watched in questioning shock as Doris returned with her tail between her legs.
"Could you please tell these men who I am?" Doris asked and it was clear that she was not amused.
"McGarrett's mother, don't you see the resemblance?" Toast asked the men who stood with the angry woman.
"We have our orders, sir." The men responded to Toast.
"Good men." Catherine stated. "We really can't be too careful."
Doris rolled her eyes.
"We are, after all, after a crazy murderous woman." Toast added with a laugh. "Wouldn't want one just wandering in off the street."
"She's fine, you can go." Duke stated to the HPD men, when he noticed the colour in Doris's face change. "She is who she says she is and we were expecting her return." Duke added and the two men nodded to their superior before turning and walking out of the Five-O office, and Doris was left alone in the bullpen with the shocked spectators.
"I've come to help." Doris announced when an awkward silence had fallen.
"And to return Steve's truck, yes we know. We have bugged all our people. We heard everything that passed between you and Steve in the truck. The look on your face when Steve snuck up on you! Priceless!" Toast laughed but never took his eyes off the smart system.
The people in the bullpen watching Doris could see her displeasure. She was grinding her teeth and clenching her jaw so tightly that you could see the veins in her neck, but Toast just kept talking and it looked like she might actually blow up, but she kept her cool. She would behave and help out for Steve's sake - if only to prove she had some compassion.
"What do you mean bugged?" Doris asked when she had regained some calmness.
"Toast has been working on some prototypes in his spare time. He's a bit of a genius, and when he's bored magic happens. They are proving very handy and more advanced then some of the official gadgets we have." Catherine admitted. "Some cameras and microphones, and high tech pedometers that are microscopic and practically un-detectable. I thank God he's on our side and not on the bad guy's!"
"Never on the wrong side ever again!" Toast admitted proudly. "I went down that path once and Danny pulled me out and got me help, and now here I am. I'm doing good for the sake of the good. They really aren't as special as Cat is making them out to be though," he added modestly and then continued, "they are micro GPS units that will piggy back on any signal or satellite and have encryption enough to be nearly invisible. They camouflage themselves within other signals and unless you are watching them, or have my program to single them out, you wouldn't even see them. It's all part of my plan to keep track of our people and their movements, as well as helping me gather information in real time so that we can keep working on leads and piece together this puzzle." he explained. "I don't ever want to lose them again."
"Sounds pretty genius to me." Doris admitted.
"Well, I guess it is for now, until someone smarter comes along and makes it better." Toast said and lowered his eyes back to the computer system he'd been working at.
"Can't take a compliment?" Doris asked with half a smile.
"He's not used to the positive, not yet at least, but if we keep telling him he's doing a good job, someday he'll be bound to believe it." Catherine teased as she elbowed the hacker at the computer beside her.
"Stop, please, I have work to do." Toast stated as he blushed and buried himself deeper into his encryption.
"And what can I do?" Doris asked as she looked around the office to take the attention of the embarrassed hacker.
"Well, you may have some connections that could be useful to us. It seems like everyone is pulling in the same names. Misha Prokovia. It may be an alias, or a new identity, but he sounds to be Gladys's right hand man." Catherine explained.
"And maybe the CIA has something on him and his movements." Doris stated.
"Exactly."
"Give me an office and an hour, and I'll see what I can find out for you."
"Take Danny's, it's free for now and his computer has been cleared by Toast." Catherine said.
"Anything else I should know about this guy?"
"He has a brother here on the island." Catherine answered as Charlie Fong's phone started ringing.
"It's Max. Bodies are finally coming in to the medical examiners officer from the fire. It's all hands on deck over there and they are working as fast as they can. Preliminary investigations have linked some of the deceased to the men from the airport." Charlie announced to the room.
"Take Duke and go see what you can do to help." Toast ordered and handed an ear piece and tacked the micro GPS to the bottom of his shoe.
"How are you keeping track of all these feeds?" Doris asked as Charlie's camera went live on another monitor in the bullpen.
"I've programmed the system to listen and look for similarities. It runs facial recognition and key term searches in real time and maps everything together for me on the island map here. Each person is a different colour and as they move it logs them in and the times. It will also flag key locations that might be of interest to us if certain people end up crossing paths without knowing it." Toast explained and pointed to the map on the smart table. "I'm also really good at multi tasking." he added and then returned all his attention to the lap top he'd moved to.
"Has her computer given you anything?"
"Not really, though she does have some financial software that she seems to be using for a business or two. It might be a link to the construction company, or maybe it's something else. I'm coding a program to back-track and maybe I'll get a clearer picture of all her financials. It's a long shot but it's worth a try."
"Construction business?" Doris asked.
"We think it's a front for her training facility, but we want to be sure before we hit it." Catherine explained.
"I have some connections in homeland security and the IRA. I'll see if this Misha Prokovia is a citizen and if he's paying all his taxes, and if he has anything to do with the construction site as well." Doris stated, Toast nodded his agreement, and then she retreated to Danny's office.
5-0
As morning wore on and turned to afternoon, Danny and Steve left the base with much of the same conclusions as when they started. The same stories plagued them as one by one they questioned the men who had been taken into captivity after the attack on the airport. Some men had a lot to say to paint the pictures, while others were short and tight lipped, but could be persuaded to get to the point.
Some of the men involved had many parts to play, other were there for one reason. Lori Weston had always been the target, knowing full well that she had left the island and was bound to come back to help her friends, but causing the distraction was also on the block to keep Five-O running in circles. Some men worked maintenance at the airport and used garbage bags and cleaning trollies to get the weapons into the terminal. Others knew where the exits were and managed to get in once the shooting starting. The chaos of the situation was all part of the master plan but it didn't happen exactly as it was supposed to because of a second woman who might have been just as crazy as the first.
Followed by their back-up, Danny and Steve made their way back to the office. Turning off their earpieces and microphones, they sat in silence for a long moment, after having warned the office of their going off line and not to worry, as Steve drove around this time.
"She is going to try to lure us out to that construction site because she knows we're going to put the pieces together and that we will take the risk to capture or kill her to end this." Danny said finally breaking the silence.
"I agree, but what else are we going to do? She's going to be on the look out for our armies of men. She's going to have blackmailed more people into helping her and if things get out of her control she's going to flee into the jungle where she will once again have the upper hand. And who know what kinds of weapons she's got her hands on."
"Do you think you and Catherine have enough pull to get a drone in the area?" Danny asked.
"Toast could go to the hobby store, if he doesn't already have one, and fly it into the place but what good would that do? Her people would shoot it down before we could get a good look at the place."
"No, I mean on of those fancy, weaponized drones."
"Technically, those things don't exist, and I very much doubt that the Governor or the Navy would give us the go ahead to blow the place up."
"It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. Do you think you could MacGyver us a bomb?"
"Do you hear yourself?" Steve asked in shock. "Even if I could, there are no guarantees we could kill her in a bombing."
"I'm just being realistic here. Gladys is not like us. She's not bound by rules and conventions. She's not sworn to protect, and so I'm going to guarantee if she has flame throwers, wire mazes and the gall to attack an airport, you can be sure that she'll have big weapons and most of them will likely go boom if we get too close." Danny countered.
"She's set a fire with jet fuel and I can only imagine the traps she has set out at that site but we can't stoop to that level - we will not be allowed to." Steve said with a shake of his head.
"Says the man who throws smoke grenades in skylights and blows up doors." Danny huffed. "Do you have a better idea in this really bad situation?"
"Smoke her out." Steve answered.
"Yeah, that was my idea but you pooh poohed on that." Danny stated aggressively.
"I didn't mean real smoke. You're idea would have us make that construction site into a giant crater in the jungle."
"The jungle is all ready full of craters, they are call volcanoes, no one would notice one more." Danny huffed.
"We're not going to blow shit up! My idea is just to smoke her out - figuratively speaking."
"All right, and how do you plan to do that?" Danny asked with another huff.
"She wants us at that site, and that is where she'll be waiting for us, but if we take the cabin first she'll have no retreat." Steve explained.
Danny shook his head. "She's too smart for that. That cabin will be ground zero, I'm sure, but she'll still have other plans, other holes to run to. She'll be expecting it. We're screwed in the jungle, no matter what, and she's been flaunting that this whole time. She knows we know her territory because it's all the same places - my burial, the drain, the cabin and the construction site. She knows that area, she's proved that to us, and we would be walking right back into her traps."
"Then why didn't she take us out when we were there and vulnerable last night?"
"Because vulnerability is weak and she wants us strong so that she can beat us at the top of our game. We're the best of the best, that's how she sees us, and she wants us beaten and beaten good. She needs to prove to everyone that she and her brother were smarter than us, and she will poke and prod at us until she proves it to the world."
"So you want to light it up just so that she has to come after us in our own domain?" Steve asked - he wasn't about to argue with Danny's profile of the McMahons because he knew Danny was right about them.
"We need an upper hand and I just don't know how else to get it. Maybe she is smarter than we are. Maybe all I've got left is grasping as straws or swinging in the dark. I don't know what to do anymore and even though everyone wants to give opinions and options, I just know that she's ready for that. I don't know what else to do. I don't think we can get the upper hand. I don't want to say that we are beaten, but we are with this woman. I am a confident detective, but this isn't police work anymore, we're being hunted and she knows the land." Danny admitted.
"Are you giving up on me, Danno?" Steve asked seriously.
"Normally I'd snap at you and tell you that I'm not going to go down without a fight, but I don't know if I have any fight left, Steve." Danny said as Steve pulled the Camaro to a halt at the barricade that blocked off the street to the Ali'iolani Hale.
"I need you to fight."
A crowd had gathered near the blockade as HPD officers monitored everyone and everything that came through to the Five-O headquarters. Steve stopped the car, rolled down the window and then waited as the Camaro was check, the back-up vehicles were cleared and the barricade was opened to let them pass through. It was a necessary precaution but it was annoying as hell. Finally the cars were let through and Steve parked the Camaro just as he usually would.
The two men got out of the vehicle and started toward the entrance when a commotion could be heard by the barricade. Steve and Danny turned to see a tall man with his hands on his head yelling over the officers who tried to detain him. With the man were three women and a pack of children, all doing the same thing. Their hands were on their heads and they shouted to the Five-Os who had entered the safety zone.
Reaching for their weapons, Danny and Steve made their way slowly - with their back-up - back toward the barricade. When the tall man noticed them coming his shouting changed. The woman and the children followed his trend.
"Help us. Help us!" The children chanted.
"Save us. Protect us. We are in grave danger!" The women repeated.
"I am Vladimir!" The tall man yelled as loud as he could.
"Vladimir Prokovia?" Steve shouted out the question and every officer with a weapon aimed it at the crowd of people.
"Yes, I am he, and these are the families of my partners. Please, I'll tell you everything I know about my brother and the woman if you protect these people."
Danny and Steve exchanged a shocked look and reconnected their microphones and earpieces with the office.
"Search them, clear them, and bring them inside." Steve ordered to the men who backed him up. "Make sure they have no weapons. Everyone else, watch for retaliation!" he added as Vladimir was patted down and handed over to Steve and Danny. "You'll be searched again, more thoroughly, by our people once we are inside. We know that family likes to bug their people."
"It is true, the woman enjoys her technology, but I have removed all of her devices myself to protect my family, but I understand your concern. I swear to you that that woman is after my children and I must protect them at all costs. I have been running since I dropped my colleagues here yesterday. She has killed many others. I have their families, the men I hope you hold captive, as well. These are them." He added and motioned back over his shoulder. "I was not able to save the others. The fire burned too great when I arrived."
"We know, we found them." Danny stated and moved quickly into the Hale.