Romeo Foxtrot Niner Niner
By Barbara Huff
With Editing By GM
All truths are easy to
understand once they are discovered; the point is to
discover them.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
March 1968
“So, you see, Steve, from
the information I’ve shared with you today, that we need an investigator – with
high level law enforcement resources at his fingertips – WITH a T-S-S-I Cobalt
clearance. You’re the perfect – AND ONLY -- viable choice for this critical
operation,” Carter Brinks announced to the small group of men sitting at the
conference table.
Steve McGarrett, the chief
and lead detective of Five-0,
McGarrett had been summoned
from his usual busy routine to attend the emergency clandestine meeting at
McGarrett knew many of the
details surrounding the
Brinks explained to
McGarrett that
This effort was adding to
the normally overburdened workload of McGarrett’s detectives, so he considered
his options carefully before he spoke.
His newly promoted
second-in-command, Dan Williams, was in charge overseeing the operation, from
the planning and scheduling phase right through to the execution phase. It was
his officer’s first real foray into the art and science of dealing with the
diplomatic issues and political intrigues associated with an international
security operation. Having already done his homework on all of the issues and
personalities, his help on a project of this nature would be invaluable, Steve
decided.
“Okay, Brinks, I’ll do it under one condition.
I’m going to have to bring my second in on this. There’s no way I can do all of
the leg work and research without another cop who knows the islands to help.”
“Impossible!” Brinks and the
senior Army officer present, Colonel Bennett, announced together.
The State Department official
continued his objection. “Steve, please, be
reasonable! There’s no way we can clear your man for sensitive work of this
nature in a timely fashion. You know how long in-depth background
investigations take!”
“Danny Williams already has
a top secret – he must be cleared to that level in order to be assigned to
Five-0,” McGarrett countered.
Brinks shook his head, “I’m
sorry, Steve – no can do!”
The detective smiled
pleasantly and stood up. “Well, gentlemen, it’s been interesting. Now, if
you’ll excuse me…” He didn’t bothering finishing the sentence before he strode
quickly to the door and left the room.
The Army Lieutenant, adjutant
to the Colonel, spoke. “Sir, if I might make a suggestion.” The other three
men, all clearly frustrated with the recalcitrant detective, looked at the
military man as he continued. “Williams could be cleared with the help of
Colonel Devine. He’s on post today.”
Bennett’s eyes widened as he
considered the thought. “I’ll get
Williams over here!”
The detective made it to the
main lobby of the building before Brinks caught up with him, “Steve! Steve!
Wait!” He called breathlessly as McGarrett turned to observe the man.
“We’ve figured out a way to
get your man cleared to help you, but we need to get him over here right away!”
McGarrett skeptically
considered the man’s words for a few seconds. “How?”
“We’re arranging for Colonel
Devine, a security specialist, to come ask Williams a few questions.”
“About his
background?”
“Colonel Devine is a
clinical psychiatrist by training. His questions will delve more into
tendencies and motivations. He’ll give Williams a preliminary okay, based upon
his psychological profile. Then, he can help you in whatever way you see fit
while a standard Cobalt background investigation is underway. How does that
sound?” Brinks shrugged and added, “Of course, he’ll have to sign an authorization
for the formal background check.”
McGarrett pondered for a
moment before he responded, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, huh, Brinks.”
*****
“Danny, the boss is on line
two for you!” May poked her head into McGarrett’s office, where the Five-0
detectives coordinated the plan of attack on a particularly involved and
complex fraud investigation.
The second-in-command
glanced her way and moved to pick up the phone. “Thanks, May!” Pushing the
appropriate line button, he collected the phone handset from the receiver.
“Steve!” It was all he needed to say.
“Danno, I need you to join
me here immediately,” the disembodied voice snapped.
Both Kono and Chin, who were
sitting patiently waiting to get back to the issue of the investigation, noticed
the young detective cant his head and pause. They had learned that this was generally an unconscious signal that the newest detective
on the team gave out when he was surprised or disagreed with the boss.
“Uh, you want me to stop
what I’m doing?” The detective was indeed surprised, as McGarrett had drilled
into him how critical it was that he make progress on
this case rapidly. There were also numerous other issues to be dealt with on
this typically busy day.
“Divide up the work between
Kono and Chin, and get over here as soon as possible. I’ll explain when you
arrive.”
Dan, now accustomed to
re-organizing his day tactically as the need arose, responded, “Sure, Steve,
whatever you say.”
He remained frozen in
position for several seconds after the connection was broken. Not only was
there the case, he also had a meeting scheduled with the general manager at the
Royal Hawaiian to review security concerns for the upcoming summit. Steve was
aware of that as well.
The other two detectives in
the room exchanged glances before Kono prompted the detective, “Danny? What’s shakin’ with the boss?”
The words caused Dan to
start, and he hung up the phone and turned to face his associates and frowned
slightly, “I’m not sure.” The young man sighed and shook his head. “Must be important though. You guys are going to have to
divide the effort between yourselves. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” With
that, the detective moved briskly out the door to collect his suit jacket.
As he passed by May’s desk,
he called out to her, “Could you please call Roger Johnson at the Royal
Hawaiian and let him know that something came up and I probably won’t be able
to make it to our meeting?”
“Did you want to go with
excuse number one, two, or three this time?” the secretary smiled.
Dan turned around and
winked, but kept moving away from her. “Uh, let’s go with three – I think a
summons from Steve rates an unexpected emergency!”
May nodded at the detective
and picked up the phone as he trotted out the door.
*****
Dan was escorted onto the
secure post and into the
Brinks pulled the head of
Five-0 aside requesting information about another security issue that McGarrett
had dealt with the previous year. With
Kaye out, Brinks told McGarrett that it was very convenient that he could get
the information “straight from the horse’s mouth.”
While his boss was having
the private conversation with Brinks, Dan made a point of examining his
surroundings. With the exception of the incongruous quality of the furniture,
the windowless conference room was typical of the secure meeting rooms Dan had
been in before at the naval station on several occasions. Despite the pre-World
War II age of the facility, the detective was certain that the entire building
had been renovated for security purposes. It was, no doubt, copper-shielded to
prevent electromagnetic emissions from coming in or out without the knowledge
of the security operations in the group.
“Can I take your jacket,
Williams?” Devine inquired with the cordiality of a butler, Dan thought. He casually noted that none of the other men
in the room had removed their jackets.
“No, thanks, I’m
good,” the detective responded with a slight nod and grin.
Mullin appeared in the
doorway, a cup of coffee in hand. He brought the cup and handed it to Devine,
as the pair exchanged a glance.
“Take sugar or cream?”
Devine asked as he handed the detective the unsolicited mug of steaming
beverage.
Dan, while not actually
interested in the beverage, accepted it, thinking it a bit odd that the man had
offered items which were not in sight. What if I said, ‘yes, both please?’ The colonel seemed a little antsy to the
detective, whose profession trained him to observe the demeanor of those around
him.
“No, thanks,” Dan instead
responded, and threw a glance in Steve’s direction. He knew he’d find out soon
enough why his boss had mysteriously summoned him, but the odd, overly polite
behavior of Colonel Devine was disconcerting – he’d never met a man of such
senior rank with such a patronizing demeanor.
“How is it? The coffee, I
mean?” Devine inquired.
Another unusual inquiry from
a military man, Dan thought. Since when
does the Army care about how the coffee tastes? The detective took a couple
of sips, and responded, “Umm, it’s good – thank you.”
Nobody else had coffee. Curioser and curioser,
considered Williams. He would’ve been amused, but his hosts seemed on edge.
There was an uncomfortably
long pause before Dan shifted to face his boss. His expression was neutral to
one who did not know him, but to Steve, it said, ’What the heck is going on?’
McGarrett shot a glance at
his second-in-command, but before he could respond to the expression that he
knew was requesting an explanation, Brinks broke away suddenly from his
conversation with him, and spoke.
“Colonel Devine, are we
ready to begin?”
The head of Five-0 did not
know Brinks very well. He’d only met him one other time in
Colonel Briggs spoke quickly
in the stead of Devine, “Ahh, yes
of course. Why don’t we all have a seat?” The soldier motioned to the chairs,
and everyone sat down.
“You’re a doctor?” Dan
inquired of Devine, noticing the medical insignia on his uniform.
McGarrett took a moment to
be proud of the observant nature of his detective.
The other three men were
mildly surprised that the detective had noticed, but Devine found his voice
quickly and smiled, “Uh, yes, yes, I am, but I’m detached to the 943rd Military
Intelligence Battalion.”
Dan acknowledged the answer
as he took another sip of the coffee. The grin on the doctor’s face was nothing
short of cartoon-like, Dan thought.
“Why do I feel like a guest
at the Mad Hatter’s tea party?” Dan asked. His social defenses seemed to be
slipping from him as he mumbled the question.
McGarrett, immediately
concerned that Williams would make such a strange comment, leaned towards his
detective. “Danno, are you okay?”
Dan started to look in the
direction of his boss, but his eyes stopped at the cup before him as he noticed
it was turning into two cups. From some remote perspective in his brain, he
realized that he should be alarmed, but in reality, could not bring himself to
react that way. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and blinked. The cups
were still there. He looked to his boss, and saw that it wasn’t just the cups
that were multiplying. Everything must be
okay. The Steves are here. Dan closed his eyes,
no longer able to keep them open, as his head drooped gently down towards his
chest.
Alarmed at Williams’ sudden
loss of consciousness, McGarrett grabbed his hand first and then touched the
man’s neck to check for a carotid pulse. His skin seemed cool, but McGarrett wasn’t certain that it wasn’t a case of he, himself, being
too hot.
“Danno! What is it? What’s wrong?” He implored the young man
to awaken, and for his trouble got a moan of acknowledgement.
“Steve,” Brinks began. “He’s
okay.”
McGarrett was starting to
consider an ambulance when Brink’s words registered. In one horrible moment,
Steve realized that his friend had been drugged. His shock and rage were not to
be contained. He came around the table at the doctor, who barely managed to
stand before being slammed into the wall behind him.
“What did you do to him?”
The detective’s tone was vicious as he jabbed Devine in the chest. “Tell me now
before I run your head through this wall!”
The other two Army men
grabbed McGarrett and did their best to keep him at bay from the frightened
doctor, who glanced at Brinks. “Didn’t
you explain how this works to the man?”
Brinks, evading the
physician’s question, approached the volcanic detective cautiously. “Steve,
please, it’s not an uncommon technique that we use when we need to give someone
access to classified information in a hurry. Let Doctor Devine explain.”
The words did little to
mollify Steve, but he shook off the two men on his arms, and, after an angry
glance at Brinks spat, “Okay, Doctor, talk fast!”
The man was McGarrett’s
size, but perhaps a decade older. He straightened up from his defensive
position against the wall. After a
couple of deep breaths to regain his composure, the man began to explain. “Acetyl narconal is
a fast-acting somnambulistic drug. When ingested in the proper setting, an
unsuspecting subject can be rapidly developed into a state of deep hypnosis.”
McGarrett, his sharp blue
eyes piercing the doctor, interrupted. “Proper setting?
What does that mean?” He took a moment to glance back at his friend, who had
not moved since dropping off.
“By proper setting, I merely
meant that the hypnotic state would be achieved more rapidly under conditions
of trust – such as we have here,” Devine explained as he rubbed his neck.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about
that at this point,” the detective snapped.
Devine sighed and continued
a little nervously. “Mr. McGarrett, I’m sorry that you were not made aware of
the technique to be employed here, but I can assure you that I’m well-versed in
my profession. Your man is in no danger. At this point, I would simply like to
ask him some questions pertaining to his loyalty to his country and, more
specifically to you. We’ve found that, in these quick-and-dirty situations,
personal loyalties often carry more weight than the loftier concept of loyalty
to governments.”
Brinks jumped in, seeing
that the detective was considering what the doctor had said. “Steve, let Devine ask the questions, so we
can get Williams on board to help you. You know, if he’s the kind of man I
suspect he is, that he would want to answer the questions.”
McGarrett shot a sharp
glance at Brinks, and after a few seconds of internal debate, looked back at
Devine, “You will slip him nothing else! Do I make myself clear, Doctor?” The
damage was done, and Steve had to admit to himself at least that Brinks was
right – Danno would want to help him in whatever way he could.
“No, no, of course not,” the
man insisted softly and then glanced at his subject. “He’s primed and ready
right now.”
Relenting, Steve shot a
warning look at Devine as he growled, “Okay… let’s get this over with.”
A small voice in the back of
the detective’s head told him something felt wrong. Perhaps, he decided, it was
just his own guilt playing tricks on him for his decision to allow the very
personal intrusion on his friend to continue.
The men all returned to the
table quietly as if they somehow thought they would be disturbing the subject
of the earlier commotion. Steve moved around to re-take his seat next to his
friend. Now he regretted his insistence that Williams be brought into the
situation. His reasons were purely selfish he decided as he knew that he had
become reliant on Dan’s organizational talent.
Until he had promoted
Williams, the head of Five-0, not one to delegate, sentenced himself to being
at the head of the charge on all such high profile situations. Releasing
control on this had not been easy for him, but he was determined to expand his
young lieutenant’s depth and breath of experience in all areas of leadership.
Steve knew that one of Williams’ weaknesses was going to be in the area of
bureaucratic process, but the boss was determined to bring him up to speed on
the intricacies, analities, and drudgery from which
Steve wanted / needed occasional relief. The learning process was not pleasant
for Williams, whose primary duties up to that point involved interesting
physical activities and quick thinking. But now, Dan was proving that he could
step up to the plate in an organizational and planning capacity, and accomplish
the mundane aspects of the job that fell on those in positions of leadership.
Selfish… Steve brooded one last time before his attention
focused on the scene unfolding before him.
Devine studied his subject
for a few seconds, and then spoke. “Danny?” When no response was forthcoming,
he spoke more emphatically. “Danny!”
The second time his name was
called, Dan gave a soft moan, but did not open his
eyes or raise his head from his chest.
“Danny, can you count
backward by sevens from a hundred for me?”
The young man grimaced very
slightly in acknowledgement of the request and then began counting slowly, “One
hundred…ninety-three…eighty-six…seventy-nine…seventy-two…six…sixty…” His voice
grew soft and then completely inaudible. Finally, he stopped counting.
“Danny, can you hear me?”
The doctor’s voice was soft and even as he spoke.
“Yes.” Dan did not open his
eyes or move otherwise.
“I’m going to ask you a few
questions. First, do you understand that you’re safe and among friends?”
“Yes.”
McGarrett cringed
internally, and felt a bout of nausea coming on as he saw the complete trust
his detective had in him to watch his back.
“Good…good…Let’s start with
a question about your country. Have you ever betrayed your country?”
“No.”
“Could you ever, under any
circumstance, be persuaded to betray your country?”
“No.”
“For
money?”
“No.”
“Under
threat of death?”
“No.”
Devine exchanged raised-eyebrow glances and nods with
Brinks and Bennett. Under this particular type of hypnosis, the likelihood of a
subject telling a lie was extremely small, so most individuals would at this
point admit that they would have to consider betrayal to save their lives.
Of course, Steve already
knew that his man was faithful to the death, and so felt vindicated as his
friend bore out his assertions.
Loyalty to country
established, Devine addressed his colleagues. “Next comes
the issue of loyalty to the chain-of-command.” His attention turned back to the
young man before him, “Danny, who do you work for?”
“Steve McGarrett.”
“Do you do everything he
instructs you to do?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever disagree with
him?”
“Yes.”
Does he ever! Steve mused.
“Do you always try to do as
your boss instructs you even if you disagree?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I respect his authority…I
don’t want him to be disappointed in me.”
Bennett nodded and grunted
with approval at the philosophy.
“Would you ever disobey a
direct order from Steve McGarrett?”
“Yes.”
McGarrett didn’t react
outwardly except with a slightly raised eyebrow, but felt his stomach tense at
the admission.
Devine, wondering if he’d
found a chink in his subject’s thus far “perfect” response set, glanced at
McGarrett.
“What would be the nature of
an order you would disobey?”
“I would disregard
instructions if I believed that by following those instructions, I would
endanger him.”
Devine nodded at the
response.
Steve, while annoyed at the
thought that Danno would ever consider disobeying a direct order, was
simultaneously touched by his friend’s protective attitude and concern for his
welfare. The question was how would he ever be able to bring this problem up to
correct it?
Devine continued, “I see.
Then, let me describe a situation to you, and I want you to tell me what you
would do. Someone is preparing to do harm – murder Steve McGarrett. You have
the ability to stop this by pressing a button right in front of you. Now IF you
press this button, you will die, BUT Steve McGarrett will live. What do you
do?” The physician obviously expected some hesitation, and was surprised when
Dan answered immediately.
“Push the button.”
All eyes looked at the
leader who instilled such dedication in his man. Steve, although he already
knew that his friend was willing to risk death for him, and had more than once
put himself in harm’s way to protect McGarrett, realized the depth of loyalty
and friendship Williams harbored was truly deep. The doctor, along with Bennett
and Brinks, sat there in disbelief for a few moments before Devine pressed the
issue.
“If you push the button, you
will die.”
“Steve will live.”
Devine had had enough. He
shook his head and mouthed the word, “Wow!”
For the first time since the
clandestine session began, Brinks spoke softly. “Well, gentlemen, I think we’ve
got ourselves a loyal patriot here – one who’ll take orders from his boss
without question.”
The Colonel nodded at the
apparently sleeping Williams and whistled, “Daah-yam!”
And then, only half-joking, asked his adjutant, “Frank, are you that
loyal?”
Mullin responded
uncomfortably, not taking his eyes off Williams, “I would hope so, sir.”
McGarrett was now more
concerned with his detective’s current condition. “If you’re finished with this
nonsense, wake him up!”
“Easy, McGarrett – he needs
to sleep off the effects of the somnambulistic drug. When a hypnotic state is
induced with this particular drug, the post-hypnotic side-effect is extreme
drowsiness. I’ve found that if we don’t allow enough time for the drug to
metabolize, subjects frequently awaken disoriented and agitated.”
McGarrett frowned, “What
you’re saying in medical-doublespeak, Doc, is that we have to let the drug wear
off before we wake him, or else he’ll wake up with a hangover of sorts? You
didn’t say anything about this when we started!”
“It shouldn’t take more than
an hour,” Devine stated authoritatively. “I’ll give him the instruction now.”
Devine turned his attention back to Williams, who had not moved throughout the
exchange. “Danny, I want you to relax completely. Ignore any and all
conversation that may go on around you until I give you the signal to wake up.
You will remember none of the questions I’ve asked. You will remember nothing
that has transpired while you have been asleep. The signal I will give is-” the
doctor paused for a moment, clearly trying to think of an obscure phrase. He
glanced down at the radio intercept file that Colonel Bennett had carried with
him into the meeting.
The note scrawled on the top
read, “RF Unit –
Antenna Yagi Linear Vertical..”
He’d decided. “The signal is
Romeo Foxtrot.” Those words were the standard military phonetic for the letters
‘R’ and ‘F.’
Later the imagery of
Pandora’s Box would spring into McGarrett’s mind at what happened next. Dan
opened his eyes and looked up suddenly at the startled doctor.
Even McGarrett gasped as his
friend spoke, not in the soft-spoken voice he’d used throughout the questioning
session – not like he’d been asleep or drugged.
“Romeo
Foxtrot.” His words were crisp
and his stare at the physician penetrating.
Devine was clearly uncertain
how to respond. He stuttered, “Dan -- Danny, I want you to close your eyes and
do as you’ve been instructed.”
He tried to keep his voice
on an even keel, but Steve could tell the man did not anticipate a response
like this.
“Romeo Foxtrot one-zero-one-eight-niner,” Dan recited calmly without blinking or breaking eye
contact with the doctor.
Devine tried again. “Danny,
close your eyes and sleep!”
Dan pushed away from the
table and stood. “You’ve attempted
activation to change instructions. Supply the response!”
“What?” the colonel asked.
Dan’s head snapped in his
direction as if he’d been unaware there was anyone else in the room. He then
panned to each face, looking almost scared and uncertain, Steve thought.
Disturbingly, Dan did not react to Steve any differently than he had the other
men in the room. He did not respond to Bennett’s question. Instead, his
attention re-focused on the doctor.
“The
response please.” Dan’s voice now
sounded determined and less afraid. His resolve apparently steeled for
something, the young man knew what he expected. Unfortunately, nobody else in
the room did.
“Danno!” McGarrett’s voice had a ring of desperation to it as
he was fighting back the horrible fear that he should have taken steps to stop
this madness before it had begun. But now, it was too late. Williams backed away quickly around the table
as his friend took a few steps towards him. There was no hint of recognition,
but Steve continued. “Danno, it’s me – it’s Steve! You’ll be okay. I won’t let
anyone hurt you.” He almost choked on the words as he said them. I just allowed them to pry open his brain,
and I’m asking him to trust me!
Williams’ head tilted as he
gave the friend who was now unfamiliar to him a mistrustful stare. Devine was
now moving towards him from the other side of the table. Seeing this, Dan
suddenly kicked one chair over in front of the doctor and pushed another in
front of his boss. He turned and dashed for a door that was a mere five feet
away. Mullin moved quickly to head him off and dove onto the fleeing detective.
Both men tumbled recklessly to the floor, knocking another chair over. The
lieutenant ended up on top of Dan, and made an attempt to pin the detective,
but before he could use his advantage, Dan popped the soldier in the face with
his fist, an act which was enough to cause Mullin to reel backward in shock and
pain, blood from his nose slinging a trail. The advantage now his, Dan rolled
and tossed the lieutenant to the side, where he landed almost under the table.
Steve, originally loathe to restrain his friend, somehow feeling that he should be
able to get through this drugged cloud of misunderstanding with words, now
moved in with Bennett to prevent Williams from getting to his feet again. But
the young man seemed to be too filled with adrenalin to remain down for more
than a second. He sprang to his feet, and studied his two approaching
adversaries.
“Danno, please, listen to
me!” The head of Five-0 had to try again. He refused to believe that he could
not get through to this man, who only moments before was willing to die for
him. He motioned for Bennett to stand still, and he, himself, his palms turned
upward, took only a couple more paces towards Williams. “Danno, you know I
would never hurt you. I want you to calm down.”
The young man stared
intently at the new focus of his attention. He blinked a couple of times as if
he didn’t trust his eyes. The uncertainty – and fear -- was clear. He trembled
as he studied McGarrett’s face.
“Let’s work this out
together. I’m on your side, Danno,” Steve reinforced softly, sensing he might
be getting through.
Dan turned his head sideways
as if he thought that all would become clear if he looked at the man before him
from a different angle. All at once, he took in a slow breath, and in almost a
whisper, spoke, “S—Steve?” The confusion was all too apparent.
McGarrett smiled
encouragingly, “Yeah, Danno, yeah.” He edged slightly closer to his friend.
“Wha—what?”
Williams’ eyes moved around the room slowly, observing the very different scene
from the one he’d unexpectedly left less than thirty minutes earlier.
“It’s okay – everything is
going to be okay, my friend,” Steve moved yet again a step closer.
Dan spoke but no sound came
out as he looked one last time in his boss’s direction. His eyes rolled back in
his head, and he took one step and fell forward. McGarrett plunged and caught
his detective, and gently lowered him to the cool tile. Devine appeared on the
floor and immediately checked his patient‘s pupils and pulse.
“Well?” McGarrett snapped
impatiently.
The doctor leaned back on
his haunches and frowned. “His heart rate is a little fast, his pupils are
dilated and sluggish, but reactive, and his skin is a little clammy.”
“Is he going to be alright?”
McGarrett pressed. The physician did not know that this detective wanted to
hear the bottom line first.
“His symptoms tell me he’s shocky, I’ll be honest with you, McGarrett. I’ve never seen
a reaction like that to acetyl narconal, but I
believe that, if we allow the drug to wear off naturally – which should take
less than an hour -- he should recover
from this incident with no ill effects.”
“Let’s get him over to Delta
Three. That’s the conference room across the hall – it’s got a sofa he can rest
on,” Bennett contributed as he helped Mullin, now holding a handkerchief over
his nose, to his feet.
*****
Within minutes, the group reconvened
across the hall. Dan sprawled on the couch and slept soundly for the better
part of an hour. After a very brief meeting, it was agreed that Williams had
earned his interim TSSI Cobalt clearance in the most dramatic of fashions.
McGarrett paced like a caged
tiger. “Why, Brinks? Why didn’t you tell me the whole deal?”
“Because we need you!” he
said forcefully. “And I was afraid you’d walk if I said more until it was too
late.”
The man, dark hair flecked
with gray, was sitting at the table nervously letting the ashes from his
cigarette drop into a mangled Styrofoam cup. The detective spun to study this
high-ranking intelligence official. He really didn’t know the man, except by
reputation. Kaye clearly thought highly of him or he wouldn’t be here.
“Well you were right! When
he wakes up, he’d better be okay or foreign assassins are going to be the least
of your problems!” McGarrett threatened, his anger over the under-handed plot
had still not subsided.
Just then, a soft moan came
from the man on the couch as he moved his head slightly. Steve’s attention was
immediately focused on his friend, and he dragged a chair over to sit nearby as
Williams came around.
Devine also moved closer –
he was privately concerned about the officer’s reaction to what had transpired.
Before he had time to worry further, he saw that Dan had opened his eyes. He
scanned the room slowly as if moving too rapidly would shatter the scene, his
blue eyes not entirely devoid of a drugged appearance.
McGarrett spoke first. “Danno.”
Just saying his name forced
a floodgate to open as guilt rushed into his soul. How could he have stood by
and allowed these – these spooks such personal access to his friend?
Confusion and awareness of
confusion darkened the young man’s face. Williams could feel both of his
temples throbbing with a headache that he did not have earlier in the day, did
he? Steve was here, concern stamped on his face, Dan noted. He could explain
what happened. Had he become ill? He had the strange sense that he had, but
where was he now?
“What— what happened?” Dan’s
question was simple and he looked into his friend’s eyes, seeking the answer.
The trust. It was nothing short of agony for McGarrett to see
the trust in those eyes. He avoided the question for the moment, delaying the
confession until he could ascertain Dan’s physical condition. “I’ll explain
everything, but first, tell me how you feel.”
Dan blinked and squeezed his
eyes shut for a moment, assessing himself, before he responded, “I -- I’m okay,
I think. My head hurts. What happened? Where are we?” The detective could not
let go of the thoughts uppermost in his mind.
McGarrett turned his head to
Brinks, “Will you excuse us?”
The request for privacy was
clearly not a request, and the other men in the room filed out quietly, each
aware that to stay would be an intrusion.
Devine, the last one out,
stopped at the door, “If you need anything—”
“Get out!”
Steve did not feel a need to
hear any more from the physician, and with that, he waited until the door closed.
The detective had the horrible sensation that this blunder on his part could
very well be the end of the beginning of a beautiful friendship,
There was nothing else for him to do, but plunge ahead with the entire,
unvarnished truth.
Dan listened intently,
barely moving and frowning in concentration as if it was taking effort to
understand the words. As McGarrett spoke, he was secretly concerned that the
drug had not worn off enough for his friend to completely comprehend what he
was saying. But he wasn’t about to stop until he’d said everything he had to
get out, even if he had to repeat himself later. He decided there was no need
to discuss the things the detective had revealed – after all he already knew
those things about himself.
The only other detail he
left out were the cryptic words Dan spoke as he demanded a response from the
doctor – a nagging concern hovered in the back of his mind that saying the
words out loud – what were they? Romeo Foxtrot – would send his friend back
towards the edge of whatever mental abyss he’d almost plunged earlier.
McGarrett, a
longtime veteran in the intelligence game, had also mused on the fact that the
words came out of his friend’s mouth as if they were a secret code with a
corresponding secret response. But Dan had never been exposed to the shadow
world of espionage and state secrets. From
As he finished his
explanation, Steve noticed that Dan’s usually readable expression was not
readable. Taking this to be a bad sign, he couldn’t blame the man. He’d come to
a meeting at the behest of his boss, and awakened someplace else with a
splitting headache.
But the first softly spoken words from Dan’s mouth
though were not rage-filled. Rather they had a tone of quiet amazement. He was
still putting the unbelievable pieces of the story together. “So, Colonel
Devine slipped me a Mickey so that he could interrogate me about my loyalty.”
McGarrett, who was leaning
forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, looked down at his hands
and nodded, unable to think of anything to say that could make the truth sound
less appalling than it was.
“I knew there was something
up with that guy,” Williams said as he brought his hand up to his throbbing
temple, and gently pulled himself to a more upright position. He now recalled
the almost surreal last minute at the conference room table.
“Danno, I’m sorry this
happened. I’m the one that should’ve known something was up.,” Steve’s
expression bore the weight of physical pain as he spoke.
“How could you know they’d
pull something sneaky like this?”
Dan’s question, which was
not really a question, caused Steve to look up to meet his friend’s gaze.
Forgiveness, Steve began to realize, was not on Dan’s agenda because he simply
felt there was nothing to forgive. In Williams’ mind, McGarrett had been
tricked into allowing the deed. No offense intended, none taken. Dan’s
remarkable attitude further impressed the head of Five-0 with the incredible
value of this trusted friend.
Steve’s amazed, momentary
reverie was interrupted with a knock at the conference room door. Before the
detective responded, he asked Dan, “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah – just a little
woozy,” Dan frowned slightly as he slipped his feet to the floor.
McGarrett gave Williams’ leg
a gentle squeeze and did a quick check to see that his eyes, while still
somewhat dilated, were returning to normal. He felt enormously relieved that a
personal catastrophe had been averted.
There was another small tap
at the door before it opened. Both detectives looked up, the same mask of
coolness on both faces, to see the co-conspirators rejoin them.
“How are you feeling?”
Doctor Devine inquired as he approached the patient. “Can I get you anything?”
“You mean like coffee or
something?” Dan replied coolly.
Devine canted his head and
spoke, “I’m very sorry, but it was a necessary evil.”
“Okay,” Williams shrugged,
and with a hint of defiance in his voice, asked, “And what did you learn?”
“You know what they
learned,” McGarrett spoke up as he turned to glare at Brinks. “What I already
knew.”
The huge compliment was met
with a momentary flash of appreciation from Dan, who did indeed know that he
would never betray his country.
Brinks didn’t maintain eye
contact with McGarrett, who seemed to him to be far angrier about the incident
than Williams. Instead, he addressed Dan. “So, what do you remember?”
“I remember…” Dan spoke
slowly concentrating. “I remember sitting down at a table, and waking up here.”
“That’s it?” Brinks pressed.
“That’s it,” Dan responded
with finality.
“What about—” Brinks
started, but the head of Five-0 cut him off.
“That’s enough. Interview
over!” This man was too interested in Williams’ memory for McGarrett’s taste at
this point. And with that, he stood helping his not-completely-steady
second-in-command to his feet.
“Care to remember leaving
this joint?” Steve inquired politely of Dan, who managed a slight smile.
“I’d love to remember
something about this visit – it might as well be leaving,” the detective
responded.
As the pair moved toward the
door, Bennett spoke up, “I’ll see you out.”
McGarrett nodded at him,
“Thank you, Colonel. I hope your man’s okay.” And then, shot over his shoulder
to Brinks, “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
Devine moved over to stand
next to Brinks as Colonel Bennett closed the door behind the trio.
“Serendipity,” Brinks mused
out loud. “It never fails to amaze me.”
April
As the two men, each with a
coffee cup and a pastry in hand, entered the office, one of the French doors to
Steve McGarrett’s office lanai slammed shut as a burst of overly exuberant
tropical wind caught it. Kono set his snack down on the corner of his boss’s
desk and moved to re-open and lock the errant door back into place. Just as the
Hawaiian detective recovered his breakfast from the desk, McGarrett entered his
office at his usual breakneck pace, leaving his second-in-command struggling to
keep up, fumbling with a stack of papers and two cups of coffee, which he had
just replenished before the staff meeting.
Preparations were in full
swing for the rapidly approaching influx of VIPs for the upcoming summit.
“… But I can tell you right
now that keeping track of all these diplomats and politicians
is going to be like herding cats!”
Kono, and the other already
present detective, Chin Ho Kelly heard only the last half of Steve’s remark.
“I have a cousin who’s a cat
herder on the
The big Hawaiian seemed
fully prepared to launch into a tale of cat herding adventures, but Steve held
up his hand as he moved around his desk to take his seat. “Bruddah, there’s
nobody here who’d rather hear about your cat-herding cousin, but we’ve got our
own cats to worry about right here on this rock!”
He accepted his coffee cup
and the stack of papers from a harried Dan Williams, who jumped into the
conversation. “It’s not the cats I’m worried about. It’s the other four cases
we’ve got to juggle WITH the cats.”
As Steve quickly reviewed
the document, which overlaid the security considerations with the summit’s
agenda, he was pleased with his protégé’s work.
“Yeah, Danno, I think we’re
going to have our hands full this week,” McGarrett replied. “Are we prepared to
divide up the cats and cases right now?”
“We are,” Dan said crisply.
He noticed with silent
appreciation that Kono and Chin were nodding their heads at him as their way of
showing support for whatever plan the second-in-command was forced to make in
order to successfully cover the summit. The younger officer remained standing a
few feet from his boss’ desk as he prepared to explain. Although much of the
information he was to impart was said for the benefit of the other two officers
in the room, his recitation was now directed at Steve, who continued reviewing
the papers as he listened.
“
Steve glanced away from the
document to make eye contact with his officer. “Who’s in charge of security
around the Chilean president – what’s his name?”
Dan responded quickly, “Duke
Lukela is currently in charge of security for President Eduardo Salazar. I’ve
already briefed him on the specifics.”
Satisfied with the answer,
McGarrett nodded, and Dan continued.
“
Not surprised, Steve wryly
commented, “Plotting behind my back to keep me occupied with diplomats and
politicians, Danno?”
Smiling, the officer quickly
responded, “Only with my boss’s boss!” He continued, “As a result of that
situation, I’ll have to be in the float spot every evening. So, Kono and Chin,
anything that comes up, I’ll be wired, and you shout for me. The vice president
arrives tomorrow evening, and does not fly out until late Wednesday. Kono, you
already know that I’ve listed you as the point man for the Secret Service, and
I’m afraid you’re gonna have your hands full until he leaves.”
Steve interrupted, “Okay, so
that’s why I don’t see Kono on the schedule again until Thursday morning.
That’s realistic.”
Dan, satisfied that his boss and mentor was reacting
positively to his hours of effort over the complicated schedule, continued,
“Chin, that means that you’re the officer-in-charge for the evening events
Wednesday and Friday. Kono, you’ll have the duty Thursday and Saturday. The one
Wednesday is in the grand ballroom at the Royal Hawaiian, and the host is
Senator – I mean Governor Douglas, of
Noting that the slip of
tongue had caused a break in Dan’s concentration, Steve glanced up from the pages
before him and smiled. “Danno, it’s okay to call a
prince a king, but not the other way around.”
The young man cocked his
head and smiled an almost-embarrassed smile. He spoke with unusual hesitance.
“Actually, I think it’s probably a good idea to mention it at this point, hmm,
but I’ve had occasion to spend some time with GOVERNOR Douglas back when he was
a senator.” A brief silence ensued as the other three detectives waited for a
story to follow. As the pause grew longer, Dan finally sighed and said, “Okay,
I know what you’re going to say when I tell you this, but I dated his daughter
for quite awhile in college.”
Kono hooted and Chin
chuckled. Steve took a deep breath, and began the torture. “Okay, Danno, let’s
have it. Did you and the daughter part on friendly terms or do I need to
re-assign you to another island for a few days?”
“Oh, I’d say we parted on
friendly terms.” He hesitated. “But – well, oh never mind.” He gave a small
wave of his hand, as if to push the entire subject away from himself.
“But – oh well – never
mind??” Steve pressed, mildly enjoying his officer’s discomfort.
“Well, the last time I saw
Doug, everything was cool.”
This time Kono interrupted,
“The governor’s daughter is named Doug?”
“Well, actually, her name’s
Loretta, but we all called her Doug in school.”
Dan started to fidget as he
tried to formulate a simple explanation for a complicated situation. Wait –
maybe a little complication is what this situation needs, the officer decided
suddenly, knowing his boss’ impatience for long-winded stories that had no
bearing on a topic at hand.
He started began speaking
very rapidly, “Okay, here’s the deal. Doug – that’s Loretta Douglas – and I
dated my junior and senior years at
“Anyway, she was a lot of
fun to run around with, but she was in the market for a husband sooner rather
than later. She actually went so far as to propose to me, but I was already
making plans for my Coast Guard tour of duty, and they are a pretty
overwhelming lot, the Douglases, I mean. Not that
they’re not great people – it’s just that they have this overpowering –” There
was a hesitation in the young man’s diatribe as he struggled to find the right
word. “Presence, I guess is the word. “
“So, you turned down the
Governor’s daughter when she proposed to you??” Steve was fascinated and
amused.
“Well, Steve, Doug was a
hard woman to turn down. I mean, I said no, in no uncertain terms, I mean – but
Doug, well, she still called me her fiancée until we graduated. And Buck –
that’s Senator Douglas – well, he pretty much had the attitude that whatever
Doug set her sights on, Doug was gonna get. Anyway, I left, and we sort of lost
touch. And I guess she got over it, because I saw in the paper a few years ago
that she married John Scott – you remember the guy that broke the world record
for the fastest
Steve snapped his fingers as
that story came back to him. “Oh, yeah – he’s the heir to some textile fortune,
right?”
Dan nodded, “Yeah, that’s
the guy.” Dan decided that seemed like a fitting place to end the uncomfortable
story.
“He’s phenomenally wealthy, if I recall,”
Steve added and then shook his head as he made eye contact with Dan, “Okay,
it’s good to mention little things like this – you know I hate surprises.” The
head of Five-0 did secretly relish teasing his friend over incidents that
backed up the officer’s reputation for an active social life.
Just then, the intercom
buzzed, and Steve pushed the talk button, “Yes, May?”
“Steve,
someone from the Secret Service on the line to speak with Kono.”
Kono got up. “I’ll take it
in my office.” Chuckling, he pushed Dan with his arm as he walked by in one of
those manly oh-you-devil shoves.
His friend shook his head
and called to the big Hawaiian as he opened the office door, “I’ll leave a copy
of the schedule on your desk.” And with that segway, Dan returned to explaining
the rest of the plan.
By the end of the meeting,
Steve was convinced that Dan had done an excellent job on the logistical plan,
but he had expected no less, so his praise was limited to a simple nod of
approval and an “it-looks-like-we’ve-got-all-the-bases-covered” remark. Knowing
how rare explicit praise was from McGarrett, Dan took the remark in stride and
mentally translated it into a “Pretty-good-job-Danno!”
As Chin left to actually
track down some leads on a case, May popped her head in the door of the office,
“Boss, you and Danny need to be in the Governor’s conference room in ten
minutes!”
Steve glanced at his watch.
“I hope the rest of the week goes as fast as this morning is going. Let’s go,
Danno.”
As the pair walked to their
next meeting, the physical differences between the two men were made all the
more dramatic. McGarrett was a tall, slender, but imposing figure with a dark
bouffant of hair, striking blue eyes, sharp, angular features, and a smooth,
graceful stride – attractive in a classical sense.
With his 30th birthday still
several months away, Dan Williams was shorter by several inches, with a slight,
but muscular build, short curly beach-colored hair, blue eyes, and a smooth,
youthful face. The energetic spring in his step was reminiscent of a teenage
tough, out looking for trouble.
The taller man stopped
suddenly, and turned to face his companion. “Danno –” The young man turned,
concerned that something was wrong. Steve wanted to finish the thought. “Danno,
I just want to say how pleased – how proud I am of the work you’ve done with
the summit preparations. I know it must have cost you some sleep, but it helped
me tremendously to see that I could give it to you and you would take care of
it just like I would.”
The surprise words of praise
made the young man feel almost faint with pride.
The smile that came across
his face made him look all the younger, and McGarrett was instantly glad he
thought to say what he was thinking, a habit in which he did not often indulge.
“Thanks, Steve!” Dan replied
modestly. “I’m glad I could help!”
Steve started to walk again,
and had to gently grab his young officer by the arm to get him started again.
As they entered the anteroom
of the Governor’s suite, the two officers noticed that two uniformed HPD
personnel were present, and prepared to scrutinize people as they entered the
conference room. As
the pair passed through the double doors, both nodded to the “gate-keeping”
officers.
Dan said, “Hi, Charlie,
Sang!” Charlie Hall and Sang Win returned the greeting with grins.
The Governor was already
present, along with John Manicote, the general counsel for the Governor’s office,
and three others whom McGarrett did not recognize.
A thin, black gentleman with
wire-frame glasses in a tan tropical weight suit and floral tie turned out to
be Ambassador Patrick Hernandez. He had his hand on Governor Jameson’s arm as
the Governor seemed to be listening intently to what the man was saying. The
president of
From the cowboy boots and
cowboy hat, which lie on a nearby table, he suspected that the tall – a couple
inches taller than McGarrett – barrel-chested man was Governor Robert “Buck”
Douglas. In his late fifties, with slightly receding salt-and-pepper hair, the
man cut a ruggedly handsome figure in his stylized western-style attire. All of
the men were gathered together, and had been attentive to the words of
Ambassador Hernandez until the two detectives stepped into the room.
Manicote nodded his greeting.
Governor Jameson called out,
“Steve, Danny – I’m glad you’re here!”
As the pair moved closer to
the group, the governor from
“WELL, I’LL BE DAMNED AND
HOGTIED!!” The governor blurted out loudly, causing the others in the room to
pause.
I’m glad we had that little talk before we left the
office today, Steve thought to
himself as he would’ve hated to have this little reunion be a surprise to him.
As the huge Texan moved
toward Dan smiling, the young man responded formally, “Governor Douglas, how
are you?” He grabbed Dan up in his arms and lifted him off the ground in a
Texas-size bear hug.
“Buck!” Dan laughed, happy
at the reaction, but a little embarrassed because of the time and place. “Put
me down!”
The older man ignored Dan’s
plea, and responded to Dan’s initial greeting. “Governor Douglas? Last time I
saw you, boy, I thought we were almost at the Dad stage of our relationship!”
Truly happy, but shocked, to see the young man, he continued, “What in the Hell
happened to you? Doug and I thought you musta been
swallowed up by the ocean. I couldn’t get squat outta the Coast Guard on your
whereabouts, EVEN with mah connections!”
“Maybe we could talk after
the meeting.” Dan motioned with his eyes to the group of men that were staring
at them. Buck Douglas cleared his throat and set down the detective, who
quickly straightened his suit jacket.
The governor couldn’t resist
reaching over and mussing William’s virtually un-mussable
hair as he responded, “Ahh, yeah, let’s do that,
son.” The governor suddenly turned to the group, and said in what was
apparently his normal, but loud, voice, “I apologize for my outburst, gentlemen!
It’s just that this boy was once mash future son-in-law!” Steve noticed the
back of his friend’s neck was red, and knew that his unassuming officer was
mortified at the attention being cast in his direction. Not remotely willing to
correct the governor about his former “future-son-in-law” status, the young man
swallowed and threw an uncomfortable smile in the direction of small
congregation.
Trying to re-establish some
sense of decorum, Dan turned towards Steve, who had been standing nearby
watching the scene in amusement, and said, “Buck, I’d like for you to meet
Steve McGarrett, the head of
“A pleasure, Governor –”
Before Steve could finish, he was interrupted.
“Buck – Call me Buck! The
pleasure is mahn, sir!”
“And please call me Steve,
Buck.” As the exuberant handshake
continued for a few seconds longer than Steve would have called traditional,
the two men studied each other. Overwhelming is an understatement, Steve
thought, agreeing with Dan’s earlier description of the man.
With the first round of
introductions over, the trio joined the group, who had said nothing since the
scene began. More introductions followed, and as Dan was presented to President
Salazar, he nodded and extended his hand. The man accepted his hand. Instead, he stared hard into Dan’s eyes as if
he were searching for something.
Uncomfortable with the
lingering contact, the young man said, “Sir?”
Realizing that he had not
relinquished Dan’s hand, he quickly let go, and replied, “I apologize,
Detective Williams. It’s just that you look very familiar to me.”
Dan smiled, and responded,
“I have a pretty common face.”
As everyone began to take their seats around the conference room table, under his
breath and in his lowest voice, Steve hissed in Dan’s ear, “The president
doesn’t have a daughter I need to know about, does he?” The officer shot his
boss a tight-lipped smile, but did not reply to the dig.
Finally, the group settled down
at the table to finalize the logistics for the week. Buck continued to
periodically look in Dan’s direction, stare for a few moments, and then shake
his head or scratch his chin. His reaction made Steve wonder what steps the
then-senator had taken to locate Danno after he joined the Coast Guard. It
shouldn’t have been difficult for a man in his position to locate a sailor that
had been assigned to a cutter in the South Pacific.
Steve couldn’t help but
notice that President Salazar was also staring at his second-in-command, who
was now concentrating on the plans and schedule, and seemed completely
oblivious to the penetrating stares he was receiving. Despite the undercurrent
of interest on the part of the two men in Williams, the rest of the meeting proceeded
successfully, if uneventfully, a fact which made Steve and Dan grateful.
Refreshments were brought in
as they all rose from the table. Dan turned to his boss and said, “Steve, now
that the cats are in the air, I need to get back to the office.”
Steve recollected the
cat-and-case juggling operation that was in progress. “Yeah, Danno, go – I’ll
fill you in when I get back.”
Dan nodded at his boss, and
attempted to slip out of the room before anyone noticed that he was departing,
but before he could make it all the way out the door, he was intercepted by the
Eduardo Salazar. Dan nodded cordially, but the man suddenly reached out and
grasped the officer’s hand. Then he looked down at the hand he still held from
the shake. Mesmerized by the man’s almost emotional reaction, Dan did not react
before the president had turned his hand palm up, and stared at it as if he
were studying a map. Clearly uncomfortable, Dan gently pulled his hand away
from the firm grip of Salazar. But Salazar had apparently already learned what
he needed to know.
He addressed Dan in Spanish,
at which point the detective cordially responded, “Sir, I’m sorry – I don’t
speak Spanish.” The Chilean president paused in obvious puzzlement for a moment
before proceeding in English.
“It IS you! Our paths
crossed in 1962, do you not remember me??”
The man actually seemed to
have tears in his eyes, Steve observed with fascination.
Dan stared at the man’s
face, and he had to admit that the man looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place the face. Salazar pressed on, “My
daughter and I were certain you had died in our stead.”
With those words, the key to
a long-buried memory was released for the officer, but he revealed only the
briefest flash of recognition.
“Sir, I’m completely confident
that you have me confused with somebody else. I was on active duty in the Coast
Guard in 1962,” Dan responded gently.
The smile momentarily left
the president’s face, but quickly returned. He nodded slightly, and said, “Yes,
of course, a case of mistaken identity.” He paused and then grabbed Dan’s hand
in another slow handshake. “It’s just that for so long, my daughter and I
wondered whether the young man who saved us made it out of the jungle alive.
And, of course, if he WERE alive, I would want to have the opportunity to
express my undying gratitude for what he did.” The emphasis on gratitude made
Dan swallow.
Aware that the entire room
was quietly observing this personal exchange, Dan said, “I’m sure he already
knows.” The officer responded uncomfortably as he gently rescued his hand
again, and continued, “Sir, it was an honor to meet you. Now, if you’ll excuse
me, I have duties that require my attention.” With a self-conscious smile, he
slipped from a room that seemed to be getting hotter by the second. He felt
eyes on his back as he maneuvered his way out of the room. Dampness crept into
his shirt.
He forwent the normal banter
that he usually exchanged with the two secretaries from the office of the
Governor, and made a hasty retreat to the restroom. There he rinsed his face,
and stared into the mirror.
“Okay, okay, it was a case
of mistaken identity, and you’ve got work to do.”
Willing his heartbeat to
slow, he also forced himself to breathe more casually. He strolled out the door
with as much confidence as he could muster after such an incident. He
maintained a quiet self-banter as he returned to the Five-0 offices. Okay, so
Steve saw the whole thing, didn’t he? He probably didn’t think a thing of it.
The young man paused. LIKE HELL, HE DIDN’T! He’ll be all over me with questions
the second he gets back to the office! If I give him the party line, he’ll KNOW
that I’m lying!! He can always tell! Dan felt unbelievably uncomfortable
telling even an officially-sanctioned lie to Steve. He knew that Steve held
many security clearances both during his Navy days and presently. Maybe it
would be okay to just tell him. Alright, I can’t lie to Steve. As he reached the
door to the office, he continued the tortuous line of thought. But wait – Am I
violating the law by revealing federal secrets? He knew that more than one
would probably slip out if he opened the flood gate to share his amazing tale.
Would they throw me in jail or worse?
He strolled into the office
preoccupied. May observed him quietly before handing him two stacks of
messages, one for him and one for Steve. Shaken from his reverie, he smiled at
May.
“You looked so lost in
thought that I thought I was going to have to send out a rescue party! What’s
up?” She took his arm and walked with him into Steve’s office.
“I’m afraid this summit is
going to be a little crazier than I thought,” he replied.
“Well,” she said doubtfully,
“You look like a kid who’s got to tell his dad that he just wrecked the
car.”
Dan reddened, cursing his
transparency. He insisted that nothing was up, but found he didn’t have the
energy to muster up any conviction to the statement.
May sensed that something
was amiss. Danny was not his usual, relaxed self. She let it go, knowing that
he knew she knew. If he didn’t feel up to discussing whatever it was with her,
then he was no doubt building up for a discussion with the boss.
Danny sat down in Steve’s
desk chair, an act which made him recognize how comfortable he was with his
life at Five-0. He was the most trusted confidante of one of the world’s most
important law enforcement officials. Given his phenomenal bouts with self-doubt
and confidence, it took the unassuming detective longer than it might have a
more self-assured man to realize that his opinions took second place to no
other in the eyes of Steve McGarrett. The incredible pride he had in that fact
made him more fiercely dedicated to this man than to any other he had known in
his life. Pleasing his boss – his mentor – his friend – was a priority in his life.
*****
Steve had watched his
second-in-command in quiet amazement, probably being the only person in the
room that caught Danno’s flash of recognition, and realizing that Mr. Salazar
had probably somehow correctly identified his rescuer and that of his daughter.
Danno’s official record of exemplary, but mundane Coast Guard service was
apparently not totally accurate.
As he mulled over this
incredible, but somehow not surprising piece of information, Governor Jameson
approached Steve, who was now shuffling the documents in his hand, and asked,
“What on earth was that about?”
Steve could only parrot what
Danno had said a few moments ago. He was very reluctant to say what he
suspected. If Williams had been involved in some top secret operation, it could
be dangerous to him, or others, for that fact to be revealed. After all, IF
that’s what happened, then it was obviously secret enough for the government to
falsify the man’s service record. He determined that he would learn the truth,
but carefully so as to not risk the revelation of something that could well
best be left as a shadow of the past.
“I’m sure it’s a case of
mistaken identity, Governor. Danno was in the Coast Guard during that time
frame, and unless they’ve taken to conducting clandestine operations on foreign
soil, the president must be mistaken.”
“Hmm,” mulled the Governor.
“That WAS quite awhile ago.”
John Manicote joined the
governor and Steve at that point, “Now, THAT was interesting! Steve, you should
bring Danny to these things more often!”
The detective smirked,
“John, I have a feeling that the only way I’ll ever get Danno back to one of
these meetings is at gunpoint.”
*****
“How’s your car, Steve??” May directed her
loud comment to her boss in Danny’s direction. Dan winced, and crinkled his
nose in her direction.
She smiled, and Steve
stopped his brisk pace into his office to pause at her desk. “My
car?” The question was just nonsequiter enough
to make him pause momentarily to hear the answer.
“Never mind,” she smiled,
and then immediately changed the subject to tasks at hand. “Danny already
sorted the wheat from the chafe on your messages. He said this pile is taken
care of, and these two you’ll want to see.”
The head of Five-0 glanced
into Dan’s small office space, which abutted his.
He was on the phone with a
bureaucrat from somewhere. “No, ma’am, I really don’t want to be on hold for
another second.” An exasperated, but patient Dan sighed loudly. “Yes,
ma’am...That door will have to be blocked for reasons of security during the
event – I HAVE verified with the fire marshal that it’s acceptable. You should
already be in receipt of the authorization – Ma’am, I tell you what! I’ll be
over there within the hour with my copy of the authorization, and we’ll get this
ironed out right then – Very good – Thank you.”
As Dan slammed the phone
down and looked up at his boss as casually as he could muster. Steve allowed
himself a moment of pride in how Danno was blossoming into an efficient desk
warrior, able to manage most of the paper duties and phone calls that used to
fall solely on his shoulders. He wondered what secrets his protégé would reveal
to him today.
“I’ve got to run over to the
convention center for a few minutes!” The annoyance in Dan’s voice was clear.
Steve regarded him for a
moment, and then replied, “As soon as you get back, we need to have a little
chat – preferably before dinner.”
“Right, Steve,” the young
man acknowledged, already knowing the subject of the discussion, and then
stopped. “Dinner?” He flipped open his notebook to see
what he’d forgotten.
His boss held up his hand.
“It’s not on your calendar – we have an interesting individual who needs to be
checked out.”
“From
Brinks’ list?” Dan cocked his
head, knowing his boss was speaking of leads on the would-be assassin.
“Yeah, I have it on good
authority that he has a reservation for a sunset dinner cruise, so get back
here as soon as you can!”
Dan agreed. “Right,” and
then glanced at May as he passed her desk, and said, “If that guy from the FBI
calls back again, have him patched through to me. We’ve missed each other a
couple times.”
“Check – Patch the FBI
through to you if they call!” the secretary responded.
*****
Dan’s drive allowed him to
consider how he was going to say to his boss what he needed to say. He had
already decided that Steve was the person he trusted most on the planet. That
being the case, then he needed to spill his guts, and let his more experienced
friend and mentor advise and guide him through this situation. Dan decided that
it was the presentation of the information he needed to consider.
*****
“Jonathan, we have a
potential situation here that involves President Eduardo Salazar of
The impatient head of Five-0
decided to find out what he could about Danno’s falsified service record on his
own before his officer returned. After all, he thought, Danno himself might not
– probably doesn’t – have the whole picture. Steve proceeded to outline the
events of the afternoon, including Buck Douglas’s attempts to located Dan. The
intelligence officer promised to look into the issue immediately, and get back
to him.
*****
Dan was now seated on one
end of the white sofa in Steve’s office, and his boss was seated at the
opposite end, his arm draped over the back. Steve had instructed May to hold
ALL calls. He wanted to give his friend his undivided attention.
“Steve, I’m not sure where
to start,” Dan said as he began, “But I think you’re the only person I can
tell.” The young man looked down. “I guess you have to know at this point that
some aspects of my past aren’t what they seem but,” he continued in a quick
panicky voice, “BUT I REALLY need for you to know that I NEVER did anything that
would –” He stopped abruptly. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, that he
never did anything that would have disappointed the person he respected most in
the world. He truly feared the thought that Steve was thinking he was hiding a
less-than-savory past.
Steve recognized the
situation for what it was, and stepped up to help his detective. “Danno, I may
not be clear on all of the aspects of your history, YET, but I do know that you
are a person of the highest caliber. I
do not doubt for a second that whatever happened, you conducted yourself with
honor.”
Those words were enough to
make Dan let out a deep breath he’d somehow been managing to hold.
The older man leaned forward
slightly and continued. “BUT I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit.” His
friend looked up into his eyes, confusion and concern clearly there. “I spent
many years in Military Intelligence, and I think you’ll find that I’m prepared
to accept a more far-fetched tale than, say your average cop.”
Dan smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“Steve, you are definitely NOT an average cop!”
McGarrett canted his head in
acceptance of the compliment, and said, “Sooo, you
worked for the CIA when you were supposed to be schlepping around the high seas
with the Coast Guard?”
“I worked for the guys I
thought were wearing the white hats. As it turned out – well – I’m– I’m getting ahead of myself. My
freshman year of college, I spent at the
Orphaned for a second time,
he somehow never felt like he had a right to express his devastation to those
who had the decency to take him in. The only person who had a clue about the
depth of his despair was his Aunt Clara. She tried her best to help him talk
about the loss of her brothers-in-law, but the teenager was unwilling to share
his true feelings, and either made light of her attempts or became belligerent.
Dan was enrolled in the police academy before he recognized and felt remorseful
over his less-than-grateful behavior towards her. Since then, he had worked
hard to make it up to her with frequent phone calls and the occasional letter.
With the recognition of his
friend’s tragedy, Steve studied the young man and spoke, “That was a tough time
to lose your uncle.”
Dan looked up to make eye
contact with the man who was already gazing at him, and shrugged, “No tougher
than when you lost your dad.”
McGarrett immediately
recollected that his second-in-command had subtly and casually probed him about
his past very early in their association. Not one to open up to lines of
personal questioning, McGarrett felt at ease with his new detective and opted
to share a good volume of personal details. One of those was the fact that his
father, a beat cop, had been killed attempting to stop a holdup when he was thirteen.
It was McGarrett’s turn to
shrug, but he didn’t lose focus on his subject. “I still had my mother and
sister.”
“I’m not complaining. I had
a roof over my head most of the time, which is more than some people had.”
Steve, while not
particularly surprised, was impressed at his friend’s apparent acceptance of
the events that left him with an elderly aunt as his only family.
“Well, I’d just finished my
freshman year at U of H in May of 1957, when I mysteriously received an offer
of a full scholarship to the
“Of course, in exchange for
this little arrangement, they wanted to select some of the courses in my
curriculum. Now, I had already decided that I was changing my major from psych
to police science, and the Arc was okay with that – all– all they asked of me
was that I also study German and Spanish. Pretty innocent, and one foreign
language was part of the graduation requirement anyway. It’s funny – it was
never clear to me why they insisted on the languages. I never had occasion to
use either of them – and I certainly don’t remember anything I learned now.“
“Anyway, with the Arc’s
help, I was able to take a pretty heavy course load. I even had what I would
now call a handler. At the time, they called him my mentor. Joe seemed terribly
old and knowledgeable, and he was there whenever I needed him. I had explicit
instructions to call if I needed anything or got into any kind of trouble.”
Steve spoke up, “Okay, so
the Arc Foundation is courting and grooming you…” The senior detective
considered what an excellent candidate a young Williams would have been for
recruitment. He was smart, physically fit, idealistic, guileless, and no doubt
gullible.
“Yeah, I guess they were,”
Dan nodded. “I remember the day that Joe broached the subject of working for my
country. He filled my head with the idea that I could work with a special
tactical unit that was deployed to rescue people from life-threatening
situations. Of course, the operations had to be carried out clandestinely
because of delicate political situations.” The young man paused again. “It
sounded so humanitarian and lofty. I know that I was naďve to think there weren’t
other agendas being served.”
“Danno, how old were you?? Eighteen?
Nineteen? You were VERY young! It would’ve been a
crime if you didn’t have faith in the good intentions of your fellow man. You
had a perfect right to be naive!”
The thought of an organization
as sophisticated as the CIA taking advantage of his friend, especially at such
a tender age, infuriated Steve, but he was realistic enough to know that the
practice happened. From the younger detective’s eased expression, it was clear
that Dan truly appreciated Steve’s supportive words.
Dan smiled, “Well, I was
definitely innocent in that regard, and I took full advantage of that right – I
bought into the plan, and they started my indoctrination. Eventually, they had
me convinced that it was in my best interest and the best interest of the
country that I take all of my training under a different name. And of course,
it made sense that I would need specialized training. After all, I was being
groomed for a tactical, deep-cover field position, and I had to be prepared for
anything. I took Army Basic Training at
“The Arc set up a social
history and enlisted me in the Coast Guard as part of my cover. Between
missions, I spent time aboard a Coast Guard cutter to support the false history
that I would eventually have to accept as my past. Uh,
Steve?” The young man shifted his position, and rubbed the back of his
neck.
Steve, whose head was
spinning with the facts of this completely engrossing tale unfolding before
him, didn’t speak, but cocked his head to acknowledge he had heard his name.
Dan then wryly addressed the
man. “You know – I could go to jail for telling you this…”
His friend chuckled softly
and reached across the back of the sofa to place his hand on top of Dan’s,
which rested there.
“Telling me what?” Steve
asked with mock confusion on his face.
That was what Dan needed to
hear -- he knew that his trust was well-placed in this man.
“So in January of 1960, you
graduated…” He started, and Dan picked up the thread.
“And according to my cover
history, I left for boot camp. Aunt Clara received a few pre-written letters
from me every so often – I described ship life, places I was supposed to be… My
real life though – that was a whole ‘nother ball of
wax. My mission statement was to provide assistance in the surreptitious
collection of information, which could be important to the security of the
United States, and to assist in the evacuation of persons, U.S. citizens and
foreign nationals, who are friendly to U.S. interests, from dangerous
situations.,” Dan was clearly parroting a euphemistic, memorized statement.
“Generally, I just did what
I was told.” At that point, Dan stopped
and slid into a slouching position on the couch. He just sat there as memories
surfaced like sea weed after a storm, some of it on top, and some of it
dragging below. “Each of us in the unit had a code name, which changed with
each mission. The root of each name stayed the same while the number at the end
of the name was bumped up. The highest number -- or final mission number -- was
always ninety-nine.” The detective paused again, clearly in a different time.
“So a guy would know as he was getting closer to the end of his tour – kind of
like the B-17 bomber crews in World War II.”
Steve rubbed his face with
his hands, and took a few deep breaths. “Wow!” He said, almost whispering. “Do
you mind my asking – what was your code name?”
Dan smiled and looked down,
“I hadn’t thought about this for a few years – it was Romeo Foxtrot.”
The two words galvanized
Steve. “Really.” He hoped the amazement was not
obvious in his voice, and was relieved to see that his friend was lost in his
own ponderance of the memory, and so did not notice
his boss’s reaction to the revelation. Steve was reluctant to admit to his
friend that, in his narco-hypnotic state weeks
earlier, the secret code name had slipped from his lips.
He had wondered why the
Romeo Foxtrot phrase had elicited such a paranoid reaction from the younger
cop, but now it seemed obvious that the phrase brought back some powerful,
gut-wrenching memories. It was actually a relief to have pinned down a viable
explanation for the shocking and disconcerting incident.
Thirty seconds of silence
passed as the two men sat lost in their own thoughts before Dan chose to break
the silence. “Steve, I spent more than two years of my life scared to death,
doing whatever they told me to do because I believed it was the right thing to
do.
I did whatever they asked of
me… until my eight niner
mission to
Dan paused and shifted in
his seat. Then, as if trying to prevent his hands from fidgeting, he folded
them together, and pressed them into his lap.
“I was never the muscle OR
the brains in these operations – I usually had a very simple job, which I never
completely understood. I was to hang back – not too far from the action, but
far enough that I probably wouldn’t be seen. Occasionally though, I was the little
guy they shoved into an air duct. I crawled where they told me to crawl – I ran
when they told me to run – and I hid when they told me to hide.” He looked up
at Steve with a perplexed expression, “I’m not even certain why my presence was
required. There were missions where I wasn’t allowed to do anything except sit
with the emergency gear. And when I asked the team leader what the deal was,
he’d just tell me that I was their insurance policy.”
“Insurance
policy, eh?” McGarrett
frowned at the unusual revelation and rubbed his chin. “That would imply that
you had some role to play in the event that something went wrong. You have no
clue as to what that role could’ve been?”
Williams shook his head. “No.”
“You weren’t
carrying any mission-critical information?”
“No more than
any of the other guys in my unit. I tried to figure out what value I added by
just being there, but no good reason ever came to mind.”
At Williams’
remark, McGarrett found himself disturbed that the explanation for his friend’s
presence in these missions was not only unobvious, but it was to this day hidden
from the detective himself. The people who planned such missions would’ve prepared
for every contingency – somehow Williams most certainly filled a need. But what?
Dan continued, “Anyway,
after about twenty minutes, I was starting to get a little concerned that
something had gone wrong, and of course, it had. The team returned, and they
had Salazar with them, BUT he was fighting them! They finally slugged and gagged
him, and dragged him out the window. There was no time to ask what that was
about. Escape from the situation was all about getting the Hell out of there
fast.” His expression darkened, and he looked down.
“While we succeeded in the
liberation aspect of the mission, somebody stumbled over a tripwire on the edge
of the compound. The other guys in my unit were wiped out in a chain reaction
of explosions, which by the way, also alerted the enemy gorillas that we were
there.”
He rubbed his face with both
hands and took a deep breath. The memory was clearly an unpleasant one, and
Steve found himself regretting that it had to be brought to the surface.
“Salazar and I were the only
ones left. I didn’t know why they’d gagged and tied him, but I sure as heck
knew I couldn’t get him out without his cooperation. When I took the gag out of
his mouth, he told me that they had left his 15-year-old daughter behind. Our
orders did not explicitly include anyone else in the plan. And, well, who were
they to deviate from orders?” Dan’s voice had grown thick with emotion and
venom. “It was right then – at that moment when I learned about the girl – that
a light bulb came on in my head. I knew that I needed to think for myself, and
do the right thing, and to heck with the orders if they conflicted with my
moral imperative. So, with enemy gorillas crawling all over the place, Salazar
and I managed to find our way BACK into the building.” Dan, who had been
staring at his lap, looked up at Steve.
“Nobody thought to look for
the escapee back in his prison. It took a little while, but we found her, and
then we hid in a shed inside the compound walls until the next nightfall. By
that time, the search for us had died down enough for us to escape into the
jungle to the rendezvous location, where we had tucked a radio, along with a
few supplies. I was able to make contact long enough to let the mission lead
know that I was the only one left to escort Salazar to the pickup location. I
had to make it 30 miles through some pretty unfriendly jungle conditions,
dragging Salazar and his daughter, who was already ill with some horrible
fever. We had to carry her the last ten miles or so.
Just to add to the pressure, the gorillas had managed to pick up our trail, and
they stayed pretty close on our heels the entire way. It was regular nightmare
of bugs and snakes and mud and – did you know there are colorful little frogs
that can kill you if you touch their skin?” Dan shook his head, recollecting
his dismay when he’d been warned about this.
“I’ve heard that,”
Steve frowned and nodded. The amazing tale was disconcerting at best to him,
but there were clearly pieces to this puzzle that Williams could not supply. Code
words… clandestine missions… insurance policy… McGarrett realized he let his
mind wander because Dan had grown quiet.
Momentarily
taken off-track by the memory of the horrible conditions and situation in which
he’d found himself those years ago, Steve’s light touch on his arm brought him
back to the present, and the young man nodded and plunged ahead with his
story.
“At any rate, if the pickup
spot had been another half mile away, we wouldn’t have made it. The gorillas
had spotted us, and started shooting. Plus, we were nearing the end of our
window of extraction – that was the point at which the chopper pilot was to
assume that the mission had failed and then leave. We made it to the chopper,
and I managed to get Eduardo and Esperanza on board, but I knew that if
somebody didn’t stay behind to delay the gorillas, the chopper would be blown
out of the sky by one of the anti-aircraft weapons they were setting up in the
clearing. So, I stayed behind to do what I could to throw a monkey wrench into
the works. The last I saw of the Salazars was when I
closed the chopper door. I didn’t know who the Salazars
were, and I’m not sure I ever would’ve recognized him if he hadn’t recognized
me, especially in such a different context. It’s not a part of my life that I
feel comfortable even thinking about.”
Dan turned his right hand
palm up, “It’s pretty amazing really. He remembered that I gouged my hand
royally when we were escaping the compound.”
“So, to confirm your
identity, he looked for – and found – the scar,” McGarrett nodded, but the same
question that Eduardo Salazar had wondered all these years burned in his mind,
“How did you escape then?”
Dan ran his hand over the
small mark on his hand and explained, “I was able to get a good bead on an ammo
box and cause a pretty good diversionary explosion that allowed the chopper to
leave the area. The only small problem I had left was how to get away.” The
young man looked a little chagrinned as he admitted, “I learned a very
interesting thing about myself that day – I’m very good at hide-and-seek –
mostly the hide part. It’s sort of a long story, but in a nutshell it was MUCH
easier without the Salazars, It was a pretty arduous
trek after I shook the gorillas. I was tired and kind of beat up, but I was
ultimately able to make my way down the Rio Madeira to a little town called
Dan’s voice took on an air
of amazement, “And when I made it back and got debriefed, my CO actually had
the nerve to read me the riot act for risking the success of the mission by not
following my orders to the letter. I finally convinced him that there was no
way I could leave the daughter AND get her father to go with me – not that I
would have left the girl regardless…” The expression on Dan’s face was now one
of defiance.
“That whole
incident is what burst my bubble with regard to what I was doing. I think they
misread my new, more cynical attitude as being ready for what my handler called
a status upgrade. After a few weeks off – that is onboard the USS Banta – they
tried to line me up for my next assignment. They started pressing me with a
whole lot of hypothetical situations about how far I was willing to go for my
country.” Williams looked down and frowned as he tried to dredge up a memory
that eluded him. “It’s strange – I can’t seem to remember…” After several
seconds, he shook his head and admitted, “I can’t recall what made me so
uncomfortable about the mission – it would have been the easiest job I’d ever
done for them. They wanted to send me to
McGarrett’s
eyebrows arched at the perplexing revelation. “And do what?”
Dan shrugged and
shook his head. “All I was supposed to do was make contact with a couple of
people a few times. Then, they told me I could hang out on the beach and relax
– do whatever I want to do – as long as I kept a low profile. How’s that for
weird?”
“Pretty weird,”
Steve agreed with distraction. His struggled to imagine what
the point of that mission was. To keep tabs on
someone in
“Neither – all I
had to do was to meet these guys – agree with whatever they said, and get this
– take some pictures of all of us together with a Brownie! Like
I said – weird!”
With that, the h
“Okay, I think
you were smart to be uncomfortable with orders like that.”
Gratitude for
the validation from his mentor flickered across Williams’ face as he continued.
“Easy or not, I told them I didn’t think I wanted to go through with the
mission. I’d come onboard to do good for humanity – and something just didn’t
feel right anymore. At that point, I knew I wanted out, and after a f
Even now, I can comfortably
tell you about events during my tour with the Coast Guard that never happened,
and the scary part is that it feels true to me. I was finally turned over to
the Coast Guard in April of 62, where I was actually able to get in on a great
drug running investigation and bust. I didn’t stay long though. It had finally
come to me that I wanted to follow in Pop’s footsteps and go into law
enforcement, and I knew that I wanted to come home to
Steve took in a breath and
blew it out. “Well, this certainly explains why Buck Douglas couldn’t track you
down – even with HIS connections.” He started to say more, but the intercom
beeped.
Both men knew that the
secretary would not be interrupting a hold-all-calls meeting unless it was
important. Steve rose and moved to his desk to press the talk button, “Yes, Love?”
“Steve – the world’s coming
down around my ears out here!” The strain in May’s voice came through the
speaker.
McGarrett sighed. The two
men had had all the time they would be allowed for the moment. “We’ll be right
out,” he turned to face his second-in-command. “Stick with the
I’m-not-the-guy-you’re-looking-for story. It seems that your cover is
pretty solid.”
Dan nodded as he stood,
“Right.”
“I’ve got Jonathan Kaye
running a check on the Salazar incident. We need to make sure that he won’t
present a threat to your cover.”
“He seemed willing to play
along,” Dan shrugged. “What kind of threat could he be?”
“I doubt that he personally
would do anything to deliberately jeopardize you, but I envision him telling
his daughter about you sooner rather than later. And Heaven knows who’ll
overhear that conversation, and who, in turn she will tell,” McGarrett said
quietly as the two men reached the door.
Dan placed his hand on the
knob, but paused to look up at his boss, “Steve, I just want to say how
grateful I am that you – you –”
Steve interrupted when he
saw his friend struggling for words that he really didn’t need to say. “Believe
in you and, for that reason, support you completely and utterly? You’re
welcome.”
The older man slapped Dan on
the back of the neck, and Dan, grateful to have the right words put into his
mouth, responded, “Yeah, thanks for believing.” It felt good to have a man like
Steve McGarrett in his corner.
May shoved a stack of
messages into her boss’s hand as soon as the two detectives stepped out of the
office, “The top three are emergencies. The next half-dozen will be emergencies
before the day’s out.” She then whipped around to
Danny. “You need to get back over to the convention center right now before the
security manager leaves for the day. And your FBI call came in – twice. The
next one is from Kono. He has a short list of things that need to be clarified.
The next one is from the DA’s office…”
As May continued her litany,
Dan’s thoughts traveled back to that jungle in
“And I think this one is
non-issue by now – what?” May was clearly harried,
having spent the past thirty minutes deflecting calls for the two men.
Dan turned his attention
back to her and, kissing her on the forehead, he gently responded, “Thanks,
May.”
Marginally appeased, but
still confused as to what was going on, she returned to her desk shaking her
head.
“Danno!,”
McGarrett called from the door of his office, and the detective turned to look
at his boss. “Let’s get our story straight before we – uh – share anything with
Buck.”
“Right, Steve!” Williams
acknowledged with a meaningful smile. He had definitely chosen well a man to
trust. And with that the three went about their separate tasks.
*****
“Steve, as far as I can tell,
Williams’ service record was not falsified,” Kaye’s voice sounded perplexed.
“What if I told you that a
CIA front that called itself the Arc Foundation might be behind this?”
McGarrett pressed, knowing that the record was false. The silence on the other
end of the line was palpable. “Well?”
“That puts a totally
different light on the situation. I’ll have to get back to you. Oh- and Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t say that name within
ear shot of anybody.” With the cryptic admonition, the connection was broken.
The ominous tone in man’s voice still ringing in Steve’s ear sounded ominous.
*****
“Danno, hold down the fort!
I’ll be at
“Danno—” He paused briefly
as he composed the thought. “Be careful!”
Williams smiled, relieved
that his boss remembered that he would be taking the afternoon off. Chin and
Kono had the day before off, and Dan had been the one on call since Steve had
to attend the ribbon-cutting on the new police station in Lihue. All of the
Five-0 men had worked every day for the past couple of weeks because of the
additional workload generated by the summit. An afternoon of surfing on the
“I’m always careful, Steve!”
Dan responded.
“Yeah,
right!” McGarrett was already out
the door as Kono and Chin stepped from their cubicles.
“You better be outta here
before da boss get back, bruddah, or you nevah gonna
see da waves today!” Kono challenged Williams in the pigeon English that
frequently peppered his speech.
Dan laughed, recognizing
that he ran the risk of having an additional duty dropped into his lap. “Don’t
worry, man! He said he’d be out a couple of hours. I think I can finish this
report with minutes to spare!”
“He was in one big hurry,”
Chin mused as he lit his pipe.
*****
Steve WAS in a hurry. He’d
just received a call from Jonathan Kaye, who informed him that he had just been
ferried by a military jet to
I’ll fill him in tomorrow,
Steve said silently as he trotted down the stone steps towards his car.
The
Now, one week later, Kaye
had apparently uncovered important news, and McGarrett was not about to wait
another hour to learn the details. Using his reserve military ID, he was allowed
onto the base with a crisp salute from the MP at the gate. He restrained
himself from speeding on the facility because the risk of a delay that could be
caused by a young MP training in traffic law was substantial on a Monday
morning.
He arrived within minutes of
Kaye’s arrival in the conference room. The greetings were brief and Jonathan’s
uncomfortable demeanor made Steve all the more anxious to get to the point of
the meeting as the two men took seats at one end of the long table.
“So, what could you have
possibly uncovered that warrants you hopping on a military taxi to tell me in
person?” The detective’s humor was thinly veiling his tension.
“I hope you’re ready for
this. You ever catch wind of a black project called Sweet Nothing?” Kaye didn’t
waste any time with the detective, knowing only too well that the man was one
to cut to the chase.
“Sweet
Nothing? No.” McGarrett was
certain he would’ve remembered a project thus named, even if he’d only heard it
in passing.
“I’m not surprised. It was a
deeply buried very expensive experiment that never had a line item on a budget.
The CIA front group called the Arc Foundation came into existence to identify,
recruit, and train deep-cover intelligence operatives for a variety of special
operations worldwide,” Kaye explained.
“Yeah, so what made their
effort worth a super secret price tag?” McGarrett folded his arms as he waited
for the answer. The existence of secret agents was no real secret even to the
general public.
“Elements of this group had
more to hide than the price tag. Bear with me for a few minutes and I’ll get to
my point. The Arc was looking for individuals that met very specific criteria.
First, a candidate had to be an orphan – an individual who, for all intents and
purposes – would not be likely to be missed if he were to – say drop off the
planet. Statistically, persons without nuclear families present a lower risk of
a hue and cry being raised over an unfortunate accident while on a mission. It
also means that there are fewer people that hold influence over
the individual’s decisions.
Next, evidence of
trainability would have to be present. Good grades in school or good scores on
military aptitude tests would provide that. Then, of course – because of the
nature of the work, the person would have to be an exceptional athlete.
The last measurement of
acceptability came from a psychological profile, which was derived over the
course of several weeks of observation and interviews.”
McGarrett couldn’t help but
mutter, “All unbeknownst to the profilee, I suspect.”
Kaye shrugged and nodded,
“Of course. The psychological metric used was a very complex one, but in the
interest of brevity, let me tell you that the ideal candidates were naďve and
idealistic young men, many with deep-seated self-esteem issues, possessing a
strong desire to please a father figure.”
Kaye stopped, but then thought to add, “Oh, and also very important for
the obvious reasons was the fact that each of the candidates had to be able to
live with secrets. Each man had to be able to return from a mission and not
have the need to spill his guts about his exploits to a buddy in a bar.”
The head of Five-0 wrinkled
his nose in concentration, suspecting and fearing that the man had not begun to
tell him the bad news he sensed was on the horizon of this conversation. From
Kaye’s profile, he realized that Williams was almost a perfect recruit by the
twisted metric. He strongly suspected that his friend’s bouts with self-doubt
were rooted in the loss of his parents, and later his guardian uncle. A skilled
manipulator could easily mold that grief into something less pure and simple.
“So, the Arc recruited and
trained Danno,” McGarrett pushed.
“Yes, and while limited
documentation now exists on his Arc-specific training, there are notes on the
training of one U.S. Army soldier – a David Wilkins – phenomenal sharp shooting
scores, good agility, a keen sense of depth perception, and a special note
about his exceptional sprint times.“
McGarrett nodded,
recognizing not only the description, but the pseudonym that Dan had mentioned
to him. “Sounds familiar. Go on.”
Kaye complied with the
request.
“The Arc paid for Williams’
schooling and welcomed him into the fold. He became one of a handful of
valuable, but expendable, experts trained for clandestine missions in which the
While the recognized secret
mission was as Dan described, Kaye went on to describe the less-than-scrupulous
elements within the sub-organization that wanted to funnel
“The reason there is no
written documentation on many of the missions is because, quite frankly, Steve,
the activities they supported and sanctioned were about as illegal as it can
get.”
“Did any
witnesses ever come forward to speak out against the Arc’s activities?”
McGarrett probed despite the fact that he knew in his gut what Kaye’s answer
would be.
Kaye shook his head. “Almost
all of the field operatives were completely isolated from the decision-makers
within the organization, so there were no witnesses to question that would lead
to the culpable figures at the top.”
“We believe that Danny
participated in numerous legitimate missions for about two years before he was
re-assigned to the Coast Guard in the summer of sixty two. We suspect that, at
some point, the Arc began to cross the line ethically for him. There are some
clear indications that Williams wanted out, and apparently, the operation
controllers also determined that perhaps he was not the right material for any
future missions. We’re not sure, but he may have begun
to balk and question orders – not a good thing for an organization that didn’t
like to explain itself. So, they allowed him to be debriefed.”
Jonathan had been studying
the notes in his file until that moment when he suddenly looked up to meet
Steve’s penetrating gaze. “Until you called, Steve, we didn’t think any key
operatives had survived, and we were unable to link an actual person with the
documentation we have on the Wilkins identity. We suspect Danny was released
because of his unexpected engagement to Governor Douglas’s daughter.”
McGarrett allowed the
grimace of concentration to slide into a brief, thin smile, recalling Dan’s
tale of his former fiancée status with Loretta Douglas. He didn’t bother
explaining that the couple was never engaged as Kaye continued.
“
”So, they were
concerned that Danno’s close association with
Kaye smiled
grimly, “And who of them – having complete faith in their very expensive psychological
profiling methods – could have dreamed that Williams – their wannabe-surf-bum –
would do anything more than finish his Coast Guard tour of duty, and then select
a low-profile, innocuous career?”
“Who indeed,”
McGarrett growled. “Sweet Nothing, huh? So, they used
these soldiers as disposable pawns in
their secret political machinations.” It
was clear to the head of Five-0 that the code name of the project was a
demented private joke that told him how little the masterminds behind this
valued their victims. The very idea galled and outraged him.
His thoughts jumped back to
Kaye’s words a few moments earlier, “You said you didn’t think that any of the
key operatives had survived. That implies that you have reason to believe that
Danno was more than just a team member, and why wouldn’t key operatives have
survived – if they weren’t killed in the course of a mission, that is?”
The older man took in a deep
breath, and returned the detective’s steely gaze, “That’s a pretty naďve
question coming from you, Steve.”
McGarrett’s expression
hardened in concentration and then, as the implication sank in, his eyes grew
large with amazement. “Key operatives were murdered to insure their silence?”
The detective could feel nausea intensifying in his gut.
“Well, there’s
no evidence of murder – just a series of bizarre and unfortunate accidents. But
frankly, I haven’t come to the bad part yet.” Kaye decided it was best to
reveal all of his cards sooner rather than later.
Those words caused McGarrett
to lean back in his chair, and take a few slow breaths of air before he
carefully chose his words. “Perhaps, Jonathan, you’d better get on with your
story.” The man’s tone was soft, but ominous to anyone who knew him.
“After your incident with
Doctor Devine a few weeks ago, I know you’re familiar with the concept of narco-hypnosis.”
The knot that had lived in
McGarrett’s stomach for days after Dan’s disconcerting under-the-influence
interview returned with a vengeance. He’d taken extra care to observe his second-in-command in
the days after the event, watching closely for any signs of abnormal behavior.
None was forthcoming however. Williams, oblivious to his boss’s surreptitious
monitoring, was over-loaded with summit duties and the assassination plot case,
and he performed as well or better than McGarrett had ever seen.
Now, he grit
his teeth and nodded as Kaye continued.
“Well, the Arc – without the
knowledge or consent of the recognized authorities – took full advantage of
what they called a keystone operative’s potential through the use of a special narco-hypnotic protocol.”
Steve knew that his young
friend had been victimized by those he had been forced to trust. He didn’t have
words to describe the shock he was feeling at that moment, so he sat quietly
and listened as the rest of the tale unfolded before him.
The missions were frequently
of such a secret nature that personnel were not allowed to carry any
documentation – no mission info, no identification, no maps, etc. With that
restriction, the structure of the tactical units was such that the team leader
had to memorize a lot of data. The keystone operative was the one person in the
unit who would’ve had contact with the operation controllers and other members
in the chain of command. These keystones were viewed as harmless because they
would have no conscious memory of the contact, because the information was, for
all intents and purposes, coded into their brains without their knowledge.
“Do you remember reading
about faithful servants whose tongues were cut out so that they could be
trusted by the masters?” Kaye asked.
McGarrett leaned forward,
put his elbows on the table, and rested his head upon his hands as he nodded.
“That’s how the keystones
were viewed,” Kaye explained, and then continued his report. “No captured team
member would ever be able to reveal more than a small amount of information to
the enemy, because each individually knew very little. If a keystone were
captured and tortured, he too would’ve been unable to reveal anything of value.
But an individual who knew the right combination of letters and numbers – the
activation key trigger -- could cause a keystone to cough up a wealth of
information – including more detailed information about targets, contact data
on in-country informants and agents, escape routes, and pertinent order of
battle information. It was therefore in the team leader’s best interest to keep
the keystone safe because, embedded in his head, could be the salvation of a
mission or perhaps even the entire team.”
Kaye’s tale brought clarity
to the puzzles from Dan’s recounting of events as he remembered them.
McGarrett sat up
straight suddenly. “So, that explains why Danno was kept away from the action
when possible. He was truly an insurance policy in the event of a mission
failure.”
“Exactly! The team leader could elicit critical information
from his keystone operative by verbally providing a certain alpha-numeric code.
Upon hearing the code, the keystone would counter-respond, and expect the
proper response back before any information would be provided.” The technical
details appeared to fascinate Jonathan as much as they appalled Steve.
“What if the team leader
were injured or killed?” The detective now needed to understand as much as he
could about what had happened – or could have happened
– to Williams.
“Upon the death of the team
leader, the keystone was instructed to do whatever he could to insure the
success of the mission. This could’ve involved completing the mission, or it
might’ve involved merely leading the rest of the team to a safe extraction
point. He would have access to that information in his brain that would provide
the optimum chance for the success of the mission. He would be aware of no
other information, and might not even be conscious of the fact that he now had
information that he did not have at his fingertips moments before. The human
brain is truly amazing,” Kaye remarked.
“Okay what if
the team leader was unable to provide the correct counter-response after
initiating the request for information?” Not satisfied, McGarrett continued
with his questions. His thoughts traveled back to the conference room those
weeks ago. Supply the response! Danno,
in his altered state, had demanded the proper code response. It all made sense.
“It would then be upon the
keystone to assume that an un-authorized individual was attempting to obtain
the information. He would’ve attempted to escape by whatever means he could,
and if escape was not possible, he was instructed to—avoid providing
information of any sort.” For the first time since the meeting began, Kaye’s
answer seemed evasive to the detective.
“How? By committing suicide?”
McGarrett was horrified, but knew too well the methods and weapons of the
espionage game.
“Actually, it’s very
difficult to get an individual without suicidal tendencies to kill themselves.
And, as I understand it, for this special group of men, that would not have
been necessary. Their instruction would have been to essentially turn off
access from outside stimulus to their brains.” Kaye grimaced and shrugged as if
that was all the explanation that anyone would need.
“What? What does that mean?”
McGarrett understood the words, but could only begin to fathom the implication.
“Not
suicide, but with the same result.
The subject would become catatonic to the outside world,
and no amount of torture or threats would bring him out of it. Eventually, if
the subject was not killed by his captors, he would die of thirst or
starvation.”
A chill shot down the
detective’s spine as he considered how close his friend may have come a few
weeks ago to entering a state of permanent catatonia. The devastation that he’d
innocently almost brought down upon Williams – and himself – was staggering to
McGarrett. He almost would not have believed what Kaye had told him had he not
seen for himself the cautious, unfamiliar expression on Dan’s face that day.
“Steve, if I’m correct, then
Danny holds in his head, enough evidence to get to the bottom of some of the
illegal activities that have been hidden from the intelligence community and
the American people under the pretext of national security,”
Kaye’s voice intensified at the prospect of bringing to justice those who would
abuse their power within the system. “I can’t impress upon you the potential
importance of what the last surviving Arc keystone operative may be able to
tell us.”
“The last
surviving keystone operative – that sounds like a pretty dangerous label.”
McGarrett responded as his friend’s precarious situation crystallized in his
mind. With Kaye’s agenda and rationale now clear to the detective, his own
objective – to protect Williams – blended into the mix. “What
I’m more concerned about, Jonathan,” Steve said softly, “is the fact that those
who would be exposed may find out – or already know – that Danno can reveal
them to the light of day.”
He slammed his fist on the
table with such force that Kaye jumped.
McGarrett spat, “What can we
do here? Can we get Danno to let the cat out of the bag so that it would be a
waste of time to target him? Can we get him to reveal what he knows without
sending him off the deep end? If I’m reading you right, one wrong move on our
part would be the same as putting a bullet in his head!”
“I’ve got Doctor Richard
Bellagio en route from the
“Get him in here to explain
that his government – the same one who’s secrets he
would die to protect – has tampered with his mind in a potentially lethal way?
That he has knowledge locked away – even from himself
-- that the same government really needs? That if, for some reason, he doesn’t
trust this government to fish around in his brain, he could be murdered?” The
horrible words spilled from McGarrett’s mouth, and echoed against the far wall
of the large room. The silence was almost worse than listening to himself
shout, Steve decided without actually composing the thought.
Kaye was determined – and
actually saw no other choice but to try – to calm the upset detective. He
pressed on in a composed, but insistent way. “Steve, you know we try to police
ourselves, but the very nature of the business makes it difficult. Once someone
is on the inside of the wall of trust, there is very little that a determined
person could not do over the course of time. You know I’m right. Now, help us!
And if you don’t want to do it to help purge the community of these blights on
our honor, then do it to help Danny! He could go on forever and never have a
clue about any of this. On the other hand—”
“Yes, Jonathan, on the other
hand…” McGarrett rubbed his eyes, his head now ready to crack open from a
tension headache. “We have no choice.” What had he done to his to-the-death
friend when he asked for his help those weeks ago?
*****
“Danny.” The expression on
May’s face was almost apologetic, and it gave Williams pause. “The boss is on
line two for you. Sorry.” She whispered the apology, knowing that their leader
had probably found something that would delay the detective’s departure for the
“Told ja,”
Kono muttered as Williams stepped past him to pick up the phone on his desk.
“Steve?” Dan grimaced ever
so slightly, having the feeling that his associate was right. He listened for
about ten seconds as the Five-0 staff stopped what they were doing to hear at
least one side of the conversation. “Right now?
Okay…Okay…Sure…You’re the boss. Uh, Steve?” He
hesitated for just a moment, and then had to ask. “Are you – okay?” The
detective was silent for several seconds, and then responded. “That’s
okay…right.”
Williams re-cradled the
phone gently, thinking that his boss sounded strained. And then he noticed how
quiet the office was. He turned to see the other two detectives and May
standing in wait to offer support, if only verbally. When nobody moved, he
finally offered an explanation with a shrug.
“I’ll be at the NIC with
Steve. He says it’s important.” The young man’s words did not have their usual
tinge of enthusiasm.
The trio gathered around him
as he pulled his suit jacket from the rack to offer pats and shoves. By the
time the detective strolled from the office, he had already decided that he’d
rather help Steve with whatever he needed than to goof off the rest of the day.
That’s what he said to himself anyway, putting thoughts of the warm water and
big waves out of his mind for the time being.
*****
The headquarters building of
the NIC was a familiar place to Dan. He’d been here numerous times for
meetings. When Steve was on active duty earlier in the year, he’d come here
almost every day for one reason or another. As soon as he caught sight of his
boss coming to collect him in the lobby, he sensed that something was wrong.
Williams was rapidly becoming an expert in interpreting his boss’s subtle
gestures and body language.
McGarrett had spent years
perfecting what he was confident were un-readable postures and expressions, but
discovered in fairly short order that the newest detective on his staff seemed
to be able to break his code.
Now, as Dan watched Steve
approach him, the man’s whole demeanor screamed tension to him. As he greeted
his second-in-command, Dan had a sense that he was also anxious and possibly
concerned. He could feel his boss assessing him, as if Steve thought he were injured in some way. A very disconcerting sensation,
Williams decided.
McGarrett rushed him up the
st
From the expression on
Kaye’s face, when he saw him, Dan had the very strange
sense that he was to be the focus of the meeting. The three strangers
exchanged quick glances and sized him up as well. Similarities between this
scene and the one at
Kaye shook the detective’s
hand. “Danny, thank you for coming. I’d like for you
to meet
Dan exchanged courtesies
with the three men, but managed to throw an almost alarmed glance in his boss’s
direction. He wondered if he should jokingly inquire as to whether he needed
another type of security clearance, but thought better of it, and the
expression on Steve’s face did nothing to allay his concerns.
They all took seats at a
small round table, and Steve took in a deep breath and exhaled before he spoke
in a soft tone, “Danno, I know you recall that Jonathan was checking out some
issues relating to your falsified service record.”
Dan nodded slightly,
listening intently as Steve continued.
“I have to tell you that
what he’s unearthed as a result is a horrible story, one that involves
everything up to and including murder. I didn’t think it was relevant at the
time, but I need to tell you what happened while you were under the effects of
Doctor Devine’s drug.”
Dan, concern furling his
brow, countered, “You said that I answered the questions, and then ended up
struggling with that Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, that’s right, but you
said a couple of things that were very cryptic. Devine told you that your
signal to wake up was the phrase Romeo Foxtrot.”
Dan’s startled reaction was
dramatic. “What made him pick that?”
Steve shrugged and shook his
head. “It was actually just chance.”
Visibly shaken, Dan leaned
back in his chair. “Okay— so lay it on me.”
Kaye took the floor at that
time and traversed his way through the story that he related to McGarrett earlier.
This time, the intelligence official found it more difficult to face his
audience, as the young man’s penetrating gaze vacillated from skepticism to
uncertainty to anger.
McGarrett sat near his
friend, who occasionally shot a validating glance in his direction, and sensed
the horror and disbelief that Williams was feeling. Exposure to the seamy
underbelly of humanity was enough to invite cynicism into any cop’s soul. One
of the things that Steve found so refreshing about Dan was the fact that he seemed
able to blend a skeptical shell – vital to being a good investigator – with an
idealistic perspective. The thought that this revelation of events might
somehow soil his friend’s mind-set was almost sickening to McGarrett as he
recognized this as a disturbing possibility.
When Kaye finally stopped
speaking, nobody could bring themselves to say anything for a good thirty
seconds. They all sat there, allowing the detective time to absorb the dramatic
information.
Just before the silence
became painful, Williams, who’d been sitting like a statue for the final
fifteen minutes of Kaye’s report, swallowed and slowly
turned to McGarrett.
“Is—is this true? I mean, do
you believe this story?” He sought – prayed for – in his friend’s eyes a hint
that the man didn’t really believe this horrible story.
Steve looked down for a few
moments before he looked back up to lock his gaze on his detective. “Yes,
Danno, I’m afraid I do.”
Dan looked away suddenly and
ran his hand over his face, leaving his hand to cover his mouth for a few
seconds, not certain what to say or what to do. It was too unbelievable – that
his government – would betray his trust.
Kaye leaned on the table
towards Williams. “Danny, let us help you. Doctor Bellagio is well-versed in
the techniques employed by the Arc.”
Dan’s eyes flashed with
anger. “You don’t want to help me. You want me to help you – any benefit to me
in this deal is incidental!” The pain that accompanied the words was not lost
on Steve.
“That’s NOT true! You may be
in danger!” Kaye’s voice turned more forceful. “We need to—”
Dan cut him off and stood. “In danger? It seems to me I might be in more danger of off-ing myself if I let you touch me! I think I need to wait
until my head stops spinning before I make any decisions.” His words were
forceful and rife with determination. He turned suddenly to scrutinize Doctor
Bellagio. “Or are you here to make me comply? Should we have a little chat over
coffee?” Dan took a couple of steps backward.
“Oh wait – you’re not a Mickey Finn kind of guy, are you? – You’re a
needle man,” Dan accused softly.
The physician saw there was
no answer that would satisfy the upset man, and so did not reply except to look
down at the table.
McGarrett stood along with
his friend, but made no move to calm the man. He deserves to be mad as Hell, was the thought that persisted in
the back of his head. Steve also knew Dan well enough to know that if pushed
too hard on something he was reluctant to do, he would stand his ground
obstinately, even in the face of logic. The detective had a stubborn streak,
McGarrett had to admit, that was normally overshadowed
by his own.
Now that Williams was his
second-in-command, McGarrett had to admit a grudging respect for the fact that
the detective was willing to stand up to him when he disagreed. The
confrontations they’d had thus far in their association were rare, but loud,
causing the rest of the team to stay clear until the dust settled. The entire
Five-0 staff took a measure of pleasure in the fact that their novice
second-in-command was willing to step up to the plate and serve as a buffer
between them and the man at the top.
McGarrett was not overly
harsh or insensitive deliberately, but he’d matured in the disciplined world of
the military, and so was not one to mince words or be delicate – even where
delicacy with his civilian employees would have served him better.
Williams took his
responsibility towards the staff very seriously, and was willing to serve as an
advocate for any one of them if he thought the cause was just, but he was also
very protective and defensive about the staff’s attitude toward McGarrett.
There were times when McGarrett’s actions or orders seemed unreasonable or
callous, and Dan often went the extra mile to explain the man’s logic or
perspective. This served everyone in the small group well as they were more
willing to not be resentful when their boss was terse or gave orders that
seemed unfair. Williams was the acknowledged perfect fulcrum between not only
the team, but the world, and the brilliant, frequently-distracted top
detective.
Usually, it was Williams
attempting to maneuver his boss into a more reasonable position, and now the
table was turned. McGarrett knew that Kaye was right – that Danno must allow
the purging in the end. The risk to Williams personally was just too great to
not go through with it.
The head of
Five-0 had the impulse to push the issue with his second-in-command and just
tell him the way that it had to be. Under more normal circumstances, he
would’ve immediately exerted pressure on Williams – in no uncertain terms – to
do the thing that he – Steve McGarrett – knew was best for him. To his
frustration, this was a circumstance where he recognized that the young man needed time to come around, to think things
through, and re-establish a measure of control over his life that had suddenly
been ripped from him. To rush him in the decision, as much as McGarrett would
will it so, would only serve to delay the process.
“Danny, please—” Kaye
implored.
“I’m telling you that I need
time to think about this,” Williams reiterated a little more softly. “It’s my
day off.” His eyes turned to his silent boss. “Isn’t it?”
The thought ran through the
detective’s mind that Steve might just order him to stay here and do whatever
Kaye commanded. If that happened, he didn’t know what he’d do. His world seemed
to be falling apart right before his eyes, and he was powerless to stop
it. He looked to McGarrett for much
needed stability in his shifting universe.
To Dan’s huge relief,
McGarrett took a step closer to him, but directed his words to the men across
the table. “Yes, it’s your day off. And it’s your decision as to what happens.”
With a sharp, punctuating jab of his finger towards Kaye, he finished the
thought with a violence to his tone that made everyone
in the room – except the already shell-shocked Williams – jump slightly. “And
NOBODY is going to take that from you!”
The support from his mentor
restored a measure of organized thought to Dan, whose gratitude registered with
only a glance at his boss.
Kaye, dismay and frustration
clear in his demeanor, recovered quickly and tried one more time to persuade
the detective to stay. “Danny, we’re the good guys here!”
“Well my score card’s a
little fuzzy right now if you don’t mind my saying so!” He responded
vehemently. And with that he strode to the door and
left.
“Steve, you’ve got to
convince him to submit to the—the treatment!” Kaye took several steps toward
the door through which the obstinate detective just departed.
“He needs a little time, and
I’ve got to give him that,” McGarrett returned firmly. His thoughts turned to
something that Williams had brought up a few moments earlier. He addressed
Bellagio. “What needs to happen to remove Danno’s programming?”
“Actually, Danny was right.
I am a needle man,” the doctor replied without humor. He explained. “The
process is a little more involved than the one to which your man was subjected
last month. I’ll have to use a stronger drug than Acetyl Narconal.
As a result, I’ll need to monitor his heart rate and respirations. After he’s
under, it will be a matter of peeling back the layers of conscious knowledge
under which the target subject matter is buried. Depending upon what triggers
we find, it could take hours or even days.”
McGarrett was appalled and
could not hide that fact. He shook his head. “And the risk to him?”
The doctor, a gray-h
The grim smile on Bellagio’s face chilled McGarrett, whose expression turned
hard to hide his sudden distaste for the man, whom his friend would desperately
need in the hours or days to come.
*****
As soon as Dan stepped from
the double doors of the NIC, he broke into a run, and sprinted as fast as he
could to his car. He wanted to escape – to run to the ocean and swim away and
never look back. Once in his car, he sat there for a few
moments, and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Still reeling from the fact
that he had no memory of what had been done to him, he was at a loss as to what
he should do – not just strategically, but what he should do that very instant.
Maybe the story isn’t true…but Steve
believes it is…Maybe it doesn’t matter whether it’s true… but the look on
Steve’s face – he thinks it matters… Maybe I shouldn’t… Maybe I… He
closed his eyes for a few seconds and slowed expelled every bit of
He decided that, since
swimming away was not the answer, the next best thing was to follow through
with his plan to hit the
*****
McGarrett tried
to catch his friend in the parking lot at the NIC, but the upset detective’s
car had just screeched around the corner and disappeared from sight by the time
he’d made it outside. So, the head of Five-0 returned to the office, and while he did not expect his officer to return soon,
each time his door opened and it wasn’t Danno, he felt a tinge of
disappointment. May and the other detectives noticed that he was distracted and
a little agitated, but couldn’t fathom the cause. May gently inquired whether
everything was okay, and he insisted it was.
May was preparing to leave
for the day when her boss stepped out of his office. Kono and Chin were returning
from somewhere. The two men were engaged in animated conversation about the
suspects they’d just interrogated.
Knowing the answer, but
still needing to ask, McGarrett inquired, “Has anyone heard from Danno?” He
thought his question sounded casual enough, but the three people who’d heard
him suddenly realized that the status of their youngest team member was the
source of the boss’s anxiety on this day.
The trio exchanged glances,
and Kono was silently elected to respond. “Boss, he’s shootin’
the curls today.”
Knowing that McGarrett was
not pleased with his second-in-command’s hobby, he decided not to mention that
he and Chin had heard through police radio chatter that Williams had chosen to
partake of the waves on a day with unusually rough surf. The HPD ranks were
rife with surfing fans and so kept close track of any of their own that
competed in the sport. For this reason, it was, to Dan’s annoyance and dismay,
easy for his boss to track his surfing-related activities, as they were
frequently broadcast like news announcements over the police band radio waves.
“I know he’s at Sunset, and
I know the sets are breaking out at the fifth reef,” McGarrett informed them.
The head of Five-0 wasn’t certain of all the surfing lingo, but knew that when
waves began to break that far out, they tended to be big and violent as they
moved into the more shallow water along the shore.
The Pipe was one of the most
treacherous surf spots in the world. In the winter, the giant waves, frequently
over twenty-feet high, curled into green tubes of water for the ride of a
lifetime.
“I listen to the radio too,”
he reminded the Hawaiian detective, who shot a sheepish nod in Steve’s
direction.
May gasped. “Why would he be
out there today when it’s that –” she started to say dangerous, but thought
better of it. “That active?”
“He’s making a point,”
McGarrett replied mindlessly.
“To whom?”
“The world
– me.” With that, he retreated
back into his sanctuary and closed the door.
Seconds later the trio
standing near the secretary’s desk heard a crash from inside their boss’s
office. They all three cringed slightly, knowing the man was aggravated with
his inability to control his young second-in-command, a rare situation for one whose
every word was taken to heart by Williams.
“Coffee
cup?” Kono suggested.
Chin nodded.
“Yep,” May said agreed
softly.
.
*****
Even behind the closed door
of his office, the head of Five-0 was annoyed with himself for the loss of
self-control. The shards of ceramic that littered the floor were a testament to
the level of his frustration and concern. His second-in-command was risking his
life – as if it weren’t already at-risk enough – in what McGarrett knew was a
pure and simple act of defiance. It was aggravating to be so angry at Williams
and yet simultaneously so terrified for his safety.
A storm of emotions had kept
Steve unable to focus ever since he’d returned from the NIC. He was as angry as
Danno at the nameless individuals of the Arc that had used his friend. He
vacillated between the options available to them. For awhile, he would mull
over the risks associated with the de-programming process. If Doctor Bellagio
pushed the wrong button, would his detective actually shut down? Was Danno’s
conscious knowledge of this trigger enough to keep it from happening? Bellagio
had explained earlier, after Williams stormed out, that any subject that had
been successfully treated with this programming would be hard-pressed to avoid
following the instructions. McGarrett replayed the conversation, as he
struggled to see the solution.
“Mr. McGarrett, we are talking about levels of
awareness here. The fact that Danny is now completely aware at level one -- the
conscious state of the current moment – that he has
been programmed will have no bearing on what he knows at other levels of
awareness.”
Steve had the urge to wretch at the revelation, but
stifled all physical reactions in the interest of seeking more answers. “If the
mission leaders could elicit information from their keystones without narco-hypnotic whatever, why can’t you access the information in
the same way?” McGarrett demanded, desperate to find another option.
“I can answer that, Steve,” Kaye volunteered. “As
part of the debriefing process, all verbal access codes would have been removed
so that nobody could inadvertently say something and stumble upon a trigger—“
McGarrett interrupted, “Like what happened a few
weeks ago.”
“Yes,” the doctor responded in Kaye’s stead. “Except
that Danny was not at level one consciousness. I infer from this that whoever
debriefed and de-programmed him was slip-shod and did not spend enough time
burying what needed to be buried. Whether this works for or
against us remains to be seen.”
McGarrett rubbed the area
between his eyebrows as he pondered the best course of action. Earlier, his gut
reaction had been that the de-programming should take place immediately to free
Danno of the risk from potential assassins. But now, after reviewing the frightening
risks of the process, he wasn’t so sure. If it were him, would he rather risk
being murdered? What would be the ramifications if Danno decided to refuse the
de-programming?
He stepped out onto his
lanai and pushed on the ornate railing as he pondered. Someone who shouldn’t
know could find out – if they hadn’t already – and have Williams silenced. A
cop can make unsavory enemies in the course of the regular business day, so it
would be no shock for the world to read that a detective had been gunned down
by someone seeking revenge. And the attack would come at a time of the
perpetrator’s choosing, so there would be no way to protect Danno for any
length of time. And if the first attack failed, there
could always be another, and another…
On the other hand, perhaps
the secret would remain hidden from those who would harm his friend. What then?
Would everything be okay? Would all be as it had been before his own selfish
behavior had drawn Danno out of his cover into the spotlight? Possibly. But then Doctor Bellagio said that whoever had
“hidden” Danno’s level one triggers did a “slip-shod” job. Did this mean that
somewhere along the line, somebody would inadvertently say something in passing
that would set the detective off on the path to self-destruction? With the
memory of the
As the breeze cooled his
face, Steve decided that the risk to Dan to not allow the de-programming was
the same as the risk to allow it, BUT with the added danger of being a target
of the unscrupulous forces that had set this series of events in motion. If he
cooperated with Kaye, then at least he would not be a target from outside
forces. Of course, that was a big IF.
The anger and helplessness
that had driven Williams out into the very dangerous surfing conditions – more
dangerous than he would’ve considered in a cooler
state of mind, McGarrett knew – was the next hurdle to be overcome. No good
would come from trying to force the young man into something he didn’t want to
do. His very act on this day – aimed squarely at those who would try – was an
attempt to break free of control.
McGarrett was a man who
expected his employees to snap-to just as his subordinates had in the Navy.
Unlike the military however, what personnel did in their off-hours was none of
his business. Until Williams came on board, this had not been a problem. The
man brought so much to the table – a fresh, eager-to-please attitude and
perspective, dedication to duty, and an endless supply of energy. McGarrett
accepted that it would be his lot to deal with his youngest detective’s
immaturity and an impetuous nature. He felt confident that he could guide (and
command) and advise (and command) his protégé in such a way that would be to
his betterment and that of Five-0.
Perhaps it mattered a little
more to McGarrett because he had let Williams get under his skin. He had not
intended for it to happen, but somehow over the course of time, Detective Danny
Williams had become a friend and confidante. Not that Steve would have changed
it even if he could. The surprising personal benefit of
having someone who understood the pressures of his job, his passion for
justice, and the roots of his private nature was a gift that McGarrett had not
anticipated. Many of his heretofore private burdens were now shared, and
the load was indeed lighter.
So, now McGarrett paced his
office, wondering what he could do to exert influence on his friend that would
not be viewed as control. The police radio banter about the unusually
treacherous surf conditions and his wayward detective’s
exploits at Sunset further raised his tension, but he couldn’t bring himself to
turn the radio off. With each announcement, images of Williams on his board in
the violent surf pressed in on him unbidden. Suddenly, the speaker
crackled with a call for an ambulance to collect an injured surfer, and
McGarrett considered closing the beach himself right there and then to put an
end to the insanity. He stopped just short of making the call because he knew
it would probably compound his problem.
If he had another coffee
cup, he would’ve smashed it too.
*****
Perhaps it was the fact that
he didn’t care at the time, but Dan miraculously managed to surf the monster
sets without any wipeouts. Only the most daring were in the water on this day,
and ambulances had been called twice to collect less fortunate surfers after
their spills. Dan, frustration and excess energy spent on riding out each wave,
finally decided the waves were getting too rough and called it a day. On any
normal day, he would’ve never challenged Kanaloa, the Hawaiian God of the South
Pacific, as he had just done.
Dragging his board onto the
beach, several well-wishers and surf aficionados came over to congratulate him
on his incredible rides. In no mood for praise or company, he politely begged
out of a party invitation, and headed to his pickup.
“Danny,
bruddah!” Paul Nakamura, the HPD
officer on patrol this late afternoon, strolled up to the detective and
collected the back half of the surf board to lend a hand.
“Hi, Paul,” Dan tried to
respond enthusiastically, but found himself too physically drained at the moment to be convincing.
The detective didn’t complain when the patrolman lent a hand with his
board either. He’d had some of the most intense rides he’d ever experienced,
and his muscles felt depleted. Plus, since he’d become Steve’s second, he’d had
little time for surfing, and definitely had a sense that he needed more
practice if he were to maintain any level of skill at this sport. Perhaps it
was time to consider retiring from the big sets.
“That was some hangin’ ten out there, man!” Nakamura was exuberant that
he’d been here to witness the scene.
Dan smiled as they lifted
the board into the back of Dan’s old red Dodge. “Thanks, man. So you’re HPD’s man-on-the-scene today?” Williams was referring to
the HPD surfing reports that he knew peppered the airwaves.
“You know it, bruddah, and
I’m one lucky kanaka today. I never saw any cop surf like you did today!”
Even as Dan heard the words,
he realized he’d been incredibly fool-hardy and was lucky that Kanaloa had seen
fit to spare him. “Thanks, Paul, but don’t count on seeing me do anything that
stupid again in the near future.”
The patrolman didn’t seem to
hear the detective’s words, “Everybody’s talkin’
about it!”
Williams couldn’t help but
wonder what his boss was thinking, knowing that his second had taken such a
risk. He thanked Nakamura for the kinds words and made
his getaway as soon quickly as he could.
He took the long way back to
He’d been reckless today,
something about which his boss had warned him as when he accepted the position
of second-in-command. It is distinctly
possible, Williams, that you don’t have a job anymore. He knew that Steve
was going to be tremendously disappointed in him – and angry if/when he learned
about this stunt --
but wondered if it was a moot point.
He considered the distinct
possibility that the Feds would move in on him, drug him, and take what they
wanted from his head whether he consented or not. It seemed they were not above
that sort of thing. Twenty four months of his life had been completely dedicated
to serving what he thought had been officially-sanctioned,
humanitarian purposes. To find out that he might’ve had a role in untoward
agendas that resulted in the death of innocent people was almost more than he
could comprehend – more than he could believe. Didn’t he know everything that
was in his head? Or perhaps – he knew what he knew, but didn’t recognize it for
what it was? He thought back to some of the psychology classes he’d taken in
college. In fact, the books said that people can hide entire worlds from
themselves. He’d recently read a case about a woman with several distinct
personalities that did not know about each other. What was he hiding – being
forced to hide from himself? Was he a murderer? Was it better that he never
know his own horrible secrets? It was all so confusing. The disillusionment he
was feeling was nothing short of life-changing. The world was not as he knew it
to be.
He leaned on a rough lava
rock and felt the sun drop below the meniscus of the ocean. Across the spectrum
of humanity, there were good, ethical people and, on the other end of the bell
curve, there were the not-so-moral individuals. The givers on
one side and the takers on the other. They could be found in all walks
of life, in all professions from bankers to cops to cooks to doctors. Now, he
realized that the intelligence community was no different than any other
population of human beings. The trick was to find the good and reveal the bad
for what it was.
Sometimes, the good is harder to find than you would think,
Dan mused, but that thought made him
jump immediately to consideration of Steve McGarrett. Knowing this nightmare
wasn’t Steve’s fault, he felt a little guilty at the concern he suspected he’d
aroused during his exploits today. He knew full well
that the HPD coconut wireless had been active today – there was no way his boss
didn’t know where he was. This was the man who had stood up to the State
Department for him, and he’d repaid him by lashing out at him in a rebellious
display of irreverence for his own life.
The people he’d really like
to get his hands on were lost to him, probably forever. Justice would not be
served here, not today, Dan realized bitterly. It came to him that he needed to
return and find Steve if for no other reason than to apologize. The man that
was the bedrock of his life now was still there, probably volcanically angry at
him, but standing by to guide and advise him through
this mess with the Feds, and at the end of the day, Dan prayed he would find
himself to be a giver.
*****
It was well after dark when
Dan’s pickup rolled past the front of his apartment building to see his boss’s
car parked imperiously in the fire lane at the front of his building. The
vehicle’s owner leaned on the hood with his arms crossed. Not certain he was
prepared for a confrontation, he realized that the
diesel engine in his old bomb had given him away before he could decide to turn
around.
Angry or concerned? The young man found himself feeling a little anxious
– more anxious than he’d felt in hours – at the prospect of being berated by
McGarrett. Steve’s opinion/reaction to his escapade was strangely more
important to him than the uncertain future he was facing with
de-programming. He rolled to a stop in
the street in front of the man whose penetrating gaze was now piercing him.
“You’re not playing Truth or
Dare with the fire marshal again are you, Steve?” Dan’s expression was contrite
as he tried and managed a weak smile.
McGarrett took a moment to
study his friend, and could see no outward signs of trauma from his
by-all-accounts harrowing afternoon in the surf. However dangerous it had been,
Steve had to admit to himself that the intense physical activity had apparently
had a positive effect on his detective’s frame of mind.
“You gonna park that rattle
trap?” was Steve’s response. The familiar look was a mix of impatience and
relief.
Dan smiled, and nodded.
Steve walked around the front of the vehicle and slid into the passenger side
to accompany his detective to the garage. Whew!
Concerned – and maybe only a little angry!
Dan did not know it, but he
was the lesser of the relieved individuals in the truck. Steve could feel the
knot that had been pressing against his diaphragm all day dissipating even as
Williams maneuvered the vehicle into his assigned parking space in the garage.
Dan turned the ignition off, but neither man moved to open a door. The driver
was fully expecting his passenger to open up on him with both barrels, so he
held his breath and waited. He had it coming, and he’d
decided during his drive that whatever his boss said or did would have to be
all right with him.
Finally, after an agonizing
thirty seconds of silence, McGarrett did speak, but the tone was not harsh or
loud. “You scared me today.”
The very personal admission
made Dan feel all the worse for what he’d done. The words were almost
physically painful to him, and he wondered in passing whether an enraged
McGarrett would’ve been easier to handle.
Dan studied the steering
wheel and swallowed to clear the lump in his throat. “I don’t suppose that
saying I’m sorry and that I’ll never do anything so stupid again would
help.” The detective did not feel up to
offering excuses – he knew Steve hated them. There was no place in the world of
Five-0 for somebody who used excuses.
His officer’s regret and
calm carriage went a long way this evening toward healing the pain he did admit
that he felt, and easing the difficulty of making such an open, personal
admission. Not normally one to quickly forgive and forget, McGarrett couldn’t
help on this particular occasion feeling that there were extenuating
circumstances which contributed to Williams’ behavior (It secretly pleased him
that the detective had offered up none of those circumstances in his defense.).
After all, his protégé had learned only hours earlier that he was a victim of
those in positions of trust – possibly a victim whose life as he knew it would
be laid on the alter of some hidden, less-than-noble agenda.
Torn between anger at the
trauma he’d endured today as he was compelled to listen to the terrifying surf
banter on the police radio and the release from his torment of concern, Steve
opted for the gentler of the emotions on this evening. He was just grateful
that his friend had returned, apparently uninjured and now reasonable enough to
discuss what needed to be done to purge themselves of
the Romeo Foxtrot problem.
“Are you all right?”
McGarrett sighed as he asked.
Dan slowly exhaled. His
mentor was still in his corner – he expected it – but it felt good to actually
hear it in Steve’s voice. “Yeah, I’m fine – just hungry and tired.” He looked
up from the steering wheel and met the man’s gaze.
“Okay, then. Why don’t you
go up and change, and I’ll buy you dinner.”
Apology accepted! Williams knew the invitation was not a request, but he was only too
happy to comply. “That’s the best offer
I’ve had today!”
Both men climbed out of the
truck and moved up the ramp of the garage. Dan had his surfboard in tow, and
knew that the elevator from the garage would not accommodate it. They would
have to take the stairs.
As the pair stepped away
from the protection of the truck, they both heard the screeching of tires – not
the noise all tires make when they turn on the cement floors of garages – but
the kind that leaves a lot of rubber as a vehicle speeds up faster than
traction will allow. Dan, encumbered by his board, couldn’t turn quickly enough
to see the oncoming sedan.
“Danno!” Steve screamed as he dove towards the detective. He
managed to knock Dan roughly to the floor, sliding them partially under the bed
of the pickup. The surf board was struck with a loud
crack, one half flying up onto the trunk of Dan’s Five-0 vehicle and the other
chunk landing loudly in the back of the pickup.
Gasping, Dan quickly
assessed himself and, feeling no pain, looked to his friend who was draped across his chest. “Steve!” He couldn’t sit up
until he slid the two of them out from under the exhaust pipe.
McGarrett cried out in pain
but the words were not to say he was injured. “Danno, you hurt?”
Williams started to reply,
but heard the offending vehicle backing up, and feared that gunplay would be
involved next. Not armed himself, he reached into Steve’s suit and retrieved
his service revolver. “Stay down!” Dan ordered, and sprung to his feet in a
crouch.
He’d barely made it into a
defensible stance when he saw the flash from the passenger side of the car and
heard the pop of a silencer. He began firing into the vehicle as its driver
reversed direction again and sped off out of the garage and around the corner
out of sight. Dan emptied McGarrett’s clip into the tires of the fleeing
vehicle and was certain that he’d hit his mark, but blown tires did not stop
the car’s exodus.
With the immediate threat
gone, Williams turned back to see that McGarrett had pulled himself to a
sitting position and was clutching his chest. The grimace on the man’s face
told his second-in-command that he needed medical attention. He rushed back to
his boss and dropped to his knees to evaluate the situation.
“Steve, where are you hurt?”
He did a quick visual inspection of the area McGarrett seemed to be protecting.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” the concerned detective assured.
“Wait, Danno, no!” McGarrett
snapped through clenched teeth. “It’s just my ribs! Don’t bother with an
ambulance!”
Williams hesitated at the
order. “You might be hurt worse than you think,” he offered doubtfully,
debating whether he should disregard his boss’s order, and call an ambulance
anyway.
“I know what you’re thinking,
Danno, and don’t do it! Just help me get up!” McGarrett looked up into his
friend’s eyes and still saw doubt. Trying to add a measure of calm to his
voice, he spoke more slowly. “Really. I think I just
bruised my ribs.”
“The car didn’t hit you?” Dan
placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“No! Now help me up!”
McGarrett barked snapped a little more forcefully. Dan relented, and with his
keys, he opened the passenger door to his sedan and eased his boss into the
seat. Ever in charge, McGarrett, slipped his keys into Dan’s hand, and barked
the next set of commands. “Get my car while I put out an APB!”
Williams nodded. “Right.” And with that he sprinted up the ramp and around
the corner, slowly only to make sure nobody was lying in wait to ambush him.
*****
Dan, despite Steve’s
protestations, had contacted Doctor Bergman and requested a house call at
Steve’s place. The physician made good time and agreed with the patient’s
self-diagnosis – bruised – possibly cracked -- ribs.
“I’ve wrapped him up, and
offered pain killers – which he refused,” Bergman grumbled as Dan escorted him
to the door. “No strenuous activity for a few days. Remind him of that!”
“Thanks, Doc. I will,” the
officer responded gratefully.
Bergman stopped with his
hand on the door knob, regarded Williams. “And are you okay, Danny?”
“Oh yeah,” he responded
confidently. “The car missed me by a mile!”
“I didn’t mean the car. I
heard you were out at Sunset today.”
Dan grimaced and then
lamented, “Boy, Paul Nakamura should go into broadcasting. I’m fine – not a
scratch, but thanks.” Williams knew he was not always an easy patient, but he
did appreciate Bergman’s persistent and stubborn concern for his welfare and
that of the other members of his team.
“Danno!”
The bark emanating from the
master bedroom startled both men and they smiled as they said their good
nights. Dan locked the door behind the doctor, and trotted into the bedroom
where Steve lay on his bed, shirtless, his chest wrapped snugly with an ace
bandage.
“How are you feeling?” Dan
asked, anguish obvious in his voice, as he sat down in the stool that sat by
the head of the bed.
“You’re the one taking the
killers sets, and I’m the one that ends up immobilized – go figure. Maybe I
should just take up surfing,” Steve joked trying to lighten his friend’s
distressed disposition. It didn’t work.
“Steve, this is all my fault. You could’ve been killed trying to save my
hide.” Saying the words made his lips tremble. “Somebody was gunning for me –
not you.” It wasn’t until after the gunplay in the garage that Dan had
considered that not only was he at risk, but that anyone around him could be
part of the target. “You were almost killed,” the detective said softly, making
no attempt to hide the emotion.
“Well, we both lived to do
something about it, haven’t we?” Steve spoke with assurance, and tried to guide
his friend toward a more productive train of thought. “Did we catch anybody?”
Dan shook his head. “We
found the car, about eight blocks away, abandoned. It was reported stolen a few
hours ago. It looks like I hit somebody on the inside. There was quite a bit of
blood, but no bodies.”
Steve nodded and continued.
“Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen or more hoods who’d like to see
you -- us -- pushing
up daisies.” It was an opening that the lead detective hoped that his protégé
would take.
Williams ran his hand over
his curls and looked down. The excitement of the evening and his concern for
his friend had pushed thoughts of Romeo Foxtrot out of his mind. Now, the
obvious paranoid answer to Steve’s non-question question was that one or more
of the Arc takers had learned that he was might be about to start coughing up
incriminating information.
“You, uh, you think it’s
just a coincidence?” Dan asked.
Bait being examined. Steve shrugged. “What do you think?”
He was determined to make his detective arrive at the answer on his own.
“You sound like a
psychiatrist,” Dan mumbled.
“No need to get offensive,”
Steve smiled.
Dan looked at him, a flicker
of humor crossing his face, but he quickly became solemn again. “You’re toying
with me.”
Steve cocked his head and
folded his arms. “Now, why would I do that?”
“I was a jerk earlier, and
you’re afraid that if you don’t let me decide for myself how it is on this, I
might just decide to be a jerk again.” With chagrin and regret consuming him,
Dan looked up at his boss, who was smiling at his officer’s self-punishing
explanation.
“Danno, my friend, you are
absolutely correct – not about being a jerk – there are some things that only
you have a right to decide. One of them is whether to trust Jonathan Kaye.”
“I was kind of rough on him
today too,” the detective mused. What a day of regret!
“He’ll get over it,” Steve
assured.
“Not everybody is like you,
Steve,” Dan smiled.
“Are you thinking, ‘Thank
God’?”
Dan laughed for the first
time since he didn’t know when. “On the contrary.” And
then had to look away as he admitted, “I’m just grateful you—you
understand.”
Steve couldn’t resist a
quick squeeze of his friend’s knee. He always struggled to not feel such affection
for his detectives – he’d always believed that to get too close was to lose the
ability to effectively command. But his young associate just made it too tough
sometimes.
As it came to pass, he’d
decided to stop being concerned about that which he could not control, namely
the opinions and idle gossip of others. After all, he would have been a fool to
deny that the entire Five-0 staff as well as the rest of the law enforcement
community could see that Williams held his favor above all others. He argued
with himself that Danno was so very worthy of his esteem – and friendship. The
man’s dedication to the mission of Five-0 was beginning to rival his own he
thought. And he knew his devotion to him as a leader – and friend – was like
nothing he’d ever experienced before – in his entire life. As different as two
personalities could be, they obviously were that different. But their common
ideals, goals, integrity, mutual respect – and their work bound them together.
To not feel affection for Danny Williams would have made Steve McGarrett less
than human, and so he now indulged in the occasional acknowledgement of this
sentiment. And to Hell with anybody who thought this was a problem!
Dan leaned his elbows on his
knees. “Steve, I need your help on this. I value your opinion.” There was a
quiet desperation to his voice. “Do you trust Kaye?”
Bait taken and swallowed! McGarrett maintained eye contact as he answered the
question. “Yes, Danno, I do.”
There it was. Steve trusted Jonathan
Kaye. Williams sat up straight again, and inhaled before he replied. “Okay,
then so do I.”
“So we trust Kaye.”
“Do you think that I’m
taking a big risk if don’t let them – purge me?”
“I think – I fear – that you
are at risk.” He was frank. “Especially after this evening.”
“And clearly so is everybody
around me.” Dan’s gaze met Steve’s. “I guess I have to let Kaye’s doc do a
little housekeeping for me. I just wish I could understand how something like
this could happen without me noticing.”
McGarrett understood his
friend’s puzzlement as he himself did not entirely understand the medical basis
for the mind games that were played in the twilight world of espionage. “Danno,
I can only tell you that whatever happens, I’ll be there watching your back.
We’ll get through this together, and get back to the business of being cops.”
Dan, no longer facing the
unknown inside himself alone, felt an order of magnitude better, but he had the
need to share his concern with his mentor. “I have to admit that—that I’m a
little—worried – that I’ll wake up and find out that I’m a mass murderer or
something – OR that I just won’t wake up at all. Am I really
capable of doing that to myself? That really scares me.”
Steve considered the best
way to respond to his friend’s admissions. “Danno, you trust me.” He paused as
Williams acknowledged the statement.
“With my life,” came the soft, but definitive answer.
Steve smiled and continued.
“Then mark my words -- whatever they uncover locked away in that stubborn head
of yours, I guarantee it won’t be any criminal act or evil deed on your part.
They couldn’t get you to do the evil they bade you to do, so let’s put that
thought to bed.”
That Steve McGarrett knew –
not thought – that he would never voluntarily take part in something sinister
injected Williams with a measure of confidence that he would not have felt if
he’d heard the statement from anyone else.
McGarrett leaned back and
shifted slightly to get a little more comfortable, unable to completely stifle
a grimace in the process. Dan leaned forward and readjusted the pillows behind
him as Steve proceeded. “As for the not waking up – I don’t know how yet, but
we’re just gonna have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Dan understood that there
was no way Steve could promise that the session with Doctor Bellagio would not
turn sour, but, however irrational, it felt good to hear McGarrett order that
everything go well. So, often, it seemed to Williams that whatever his boss
commanded, however impossible or unlikely, happened.
Williams nodded, and rose
from the stool. He opened the door to the lanai and let the tropical night
*****
The next morning, the head
of Five-0 and his second-in-command were already locked away in the big office
before anyone else arrived. Dan had stayed in the guest room at Steve’s place
since they agreed there was a distinct possibility that whoever had made the
attempt on Dan’s life earlier would try it again.
Arrangements made with Jonathan
Kaye, the pair discussed the cover story for Dan’s potential multi-day absence.
Both men hated to lie to their fellow team members, but Steve was experienced
enough with cloak-and-dagger work to know that it was best to have a consistent
story across the board, and keep the rest of the staff on a need-to-know basis
for their own protection. No telling how
far this Arc Foundation was willing to go to reach Williams.
Dan stepped out of his
boss’s office to allow Steve to take a phone call from the Governor. The other
two detectives and the secretary greeted him. All were happy that their errant
detective was back in the fold, but chastised him for his reckless behavior the
day before.
“Danny, do you know what you
put the boss through yesterday?” May scolded Williams
even as she gave him a quick hug.
“Yeah. Steve already let me know last night.” The detective
responded apologetically.
His audience exchanged nods,
imagining the scene when their irate and worried boss got his hands on his
second-in-command.
“I’m sorry if I caused any
trouble in the office yesterday.” Now, it was Williams’ turn to imagine how
unpleasant the office must have been with the McGarrett tiger prowling the
halls of the Palace.
Somewhat mollified, but not
completely over her ire, she continued, “You could’ve been killed!”
Dan sighed. All he could do
was agree.
Before any more words could
be exchanged, Steve stepped out of his office, slipping his suit jacket on as
he moved. Having caught May’s rebuke, he touched her shoulder gently in passing
– a quiet thank you, and spoke quickly.
“Don’t be too hard on him,
Love. He’ll be doing his penance for me today, tomorrow, and possibly the next
day, at the NIC. The State Department has some classified files on
The “punishment” secretly
sounded worse than death to Kono and Chin, but both men suspected that their
second-in-command must have been on the hook to do it before he’d aggravated
the boss. This little suspicion made them wonder how the detective had gotten
around McGarrett’s wrath in such short order, as clearly today, the man was in
a much better frame of mind, and not outwardly upset with Williams.
McGarrett continued moving,
just a little slower and stiffer than usual, but no one commented or seemed to
notice. He gave Williams a pat. “Let’s go Danno!”
The younger detective gave
everyone an honestly unhappy nod as he followed his boss out the door. No need
for acting – Dan was truly not anxious to reconvene with the team of spooks –
even if they were the good guys.
*****
“Yes, in answer to the
question you’re preparing to ask,” Doctor Bellagio said as he offered Dan a
small glass of what looked like orange juice. “It IS spiked -- with a milder
version of what you were served up before.”
Dan glanced uncertainly
towards Steve, who stood next to him in the basement of the building next door
to the NIC Headquarters. The room looked like a hospital employee break area,
with walls of pale yellow ceramic tiles devoid of any adornments, a brown, naughahyde
sofa and a couple of matching ch
Bellagio addressed his
explanation to the young detective, “This merely serves to relax and prepare
you for a much more potent drug, which I will administer through an IV.”
When Dan made no immediate
move to take the cocktail, the doctor encouraged Williams jokingly, “It’s
better than a few martinis – I promise.”
Dan sighed and accepted the
glass. He raised it as if in toast to Steve, and swallowed the concoction in a
few gulps. “And better than Army coffee.”
The doctor smiled briefly at
his patient, and then turned to the other men. “We’ll begin with Danny’s
conscious memory of events. That will be the foundation from
which we begin our exploration.
As I must have complete
silence throughout this part of the procedure, you gentlemen may observe the
proceedings from an observation room which is adjacent to the room in which
Danny and I will conduct our business.”
Kaye nodded, but asked,
“Will we be able to ask questions or get clarifications?”
“Only by passing me a note –
and I can’t guarantee that I can get an answer for you, but I’ll try.”
“I want to remember, Doc,”
Dan spoke up. He further clarified, “I don’t want what’s in my head hidden from
me.”
Bellagio exchanged glances
with Kaye, who nodded and spoke. “I think that’s the least we can do, Danny.”
McGarrett patted Williams on
the shoulder as a subtle show of support, and he could see the orange solution
was taking effect. His friend was clearly feeling much more relaxed than when
they’d entered the facility.
“I think we’d better begin,”
Bellagio announced noting the change in his patient. “Danny, please go with
Trevor. He’ll prepare you for our journey, and he’ll be monitoring your vital
signs as we proceed.” Bellagio’s demeanor was gentle,
and gave the mildly wary McGarrett a little better sense that his detective was
in good hands.
Trevor grabbed Dan’s arm to
guide him to the door, and Dan looked at the man for a moment before he spoke.
“You’re a nurse? How disappointing.”
Trevor let out a small
guffaw, and responded, “You don’t exactly ring my bell either.”
Dan mumbled, “Good.”
As they reached the door,
Dan turned suddenly to look back at Steve. “Uh, Steve?”
McGarrett joined his
detective at the door and squeezed his shoulder, “Yeah, Danno?”
“Thanks.”
Steve, knowing
that the word held more than gratitude, nodded in response. “I won’t be far, my friend.”
Dan smiled. “I know.” And
with that, he and Trevor slipped out the door and disappeared down the hallway.
*****
A few minutes later,
McGarrett, Kaye, and Lane were seated in the
observation room with a clear view through the two-way mirror into a room that
reminded McGarrett of a dentist’s office, Dan was seated in a medical recliner,
shirtless, looking a bit glassy-eyed, Steve thought. EKG and EEG lead wires ran
from the detective’s chest and face and disappeared behind the recliner. An IV
bottle filled with clear fluid dangled from a metal hook nearby, and the tube
that ran from it meandered its way to the back of Williams’ left hand, where it
disappeared under white medical tape. Trevor was seated on a stool at Dan’s
right with a stethoscope in his ears and the pump attached to the blood
pressure cuff which was secured around Dan’s right
bicep.
Two monitors suspended
behind the recliner displayed the patient’s heart and brain functions. Small,
fluorescent green blips rhythmically traced lines across the screens, providing
Steve with a measure of comfort that everything was progressing as it should
with his friend. Despite the positive indications, McGarrett could feel the
anxiety causing a tightness in his own chest.
Maybe I need one of those OJ cocktails, he mused silently.
When Doctor Bellagio entered
the room, the patient lethargically turned his head to look at the physician,
who gave him a reassuring nod as he turned on the tape recorder and flipped
open a spiral notebook. Bellagio took a seat on a stool next to the IV bottle
and before speaking took a moment to study the monitors and get a nod of
approval from his assistant.
“So, Doc,” Dan’s voice was
fluid and relaxed. “Why did you create this…this narco-hypnotic
protocol?”
“A good question, Danny,”
Bellagio responded slowly. “I can assure you, it was never intended to do what
the Arc did with it. The idea was that we could reduce the risk of sensitive
information falling into the wrong hands by expanding a man’s capacity to
memorize important mission data.”
“Did you ever…ever program
anybody for the Arc?” Williams questioned.
“Yes, yes, I did, in the beginning, but I left
the program to pursue clinical studies in nineteen-sixty-one.” The doctor
responded as he jotted down a short note. “We’re going to start with what you
remember and work our way back.”
Dan nodded slightly, a
resigned expression clouding his face.
The process was similar to
what Steve had witnessed weeks earlier at
The doctor began by asking
Dan about his school, his military training, and the Arc-specific
indoctrination to which he was subjected. The patient revealed a more in-depth
picture of what he’d already shared with his boss the previous week. The doctor
asked the questions and Williams responded softly with no hesitance until Bellagio
began raising mission-specific issues
“Danny, how many missions
did you run for the Arc?”
When no answer was
forthcoming, Bellagio repeated the question with the same result. With a glance
at his assistant, he scratched something on the notepad, and tried a different
question. “Were your special orders the same for each mission?” Once again,
there was no reaction. “Danny, can you hear me?”
“Hmm, yes,” came the soft response.
“Why don’t you answer my
questions about your special orders?”
“Can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Can’t.”
Bellagio frowned and stood. He paced back and forth in front
of his subject for a good half minute, rubbing his chin, before he spoke again.
“Danny, do you know that you are safe and among friends now?”
Once again, no response was
forthcoming.
The doctor took a few more
paces, stopped to study the patient. For a few seconds, he stood as if frozen
in position, and then turned suddenly to stare through the two-way mirror. A
glimmer of realization brushed across his face as he turned back towards Trevor
and put up his hand in a hold-tight signal. He quietly stepped out of the room
and appeared moments later in the observation room.
“What’s going on?” McGarrett
didn’t try to conceal his concern.
Bellagio smiled and folded
his arms. “We have a little trust problem.”
Kaye spoke up, “You mean he
doesn’t trust us?”
“Well, nobody turns trust on
and off like a water spigot. It’s not voluntary.” The doctor shrugged. “He
decided consciously to trust, but that trust has not been translated into the
conviction that I can be trusted. Therefore, he’s holding back.”
“Well, can’t you just tell
him to trust you?” Kaye was frustrated and not sure that he understood.
“Jonathan, haven’t you heard
what I just said?” Bellagio’s voice sounded amused
and a little patronizing. “Nobody can force someone to trust.”
Lane spoke, “Well, what can
we do?”
Bellagio smiled and looked
at McGarrett. “He needs a guide – someone he trusts.” All eyes in the room
quickly snapped to the head of Five-0, who stared intently at the doctor.
“A guide?”
“Someone
to lead him from the subconscious world – with his cache of now-buried
information – into the conscious light of day.”
The detective stood immobile
staring at the doctor as if he were speaking a foreign language. Damn psychiatrists! Never a straight answer!
When nobody else in the room
spoke, Bellagio elaborated. “You need to be there with him, and reassure him as
we proceed. My assurances don’t mean anything to him. Are you willing?”
“My presence won’t—rock the
boat?”
“I submit that your presence
will keep the boat floating.” Bellagio explained his plan. “You and I together
must help Danny consciously acknowledge the information that has been
heretofore hidden. You see, we don’t know what verbal keys will force him to
open up, and frankly, I’m not willing to risk trying to pry them out of him. I
can see from the time I’ve spent with him thus far that he has the capacity to
shut down if he perceives a threat.”
The thing that Dan had
feared the most about
this situation – here it was looking Steve McGarrett in the face. He could feel
himself becoming warm as he saw that it was going to be up to him to deal with
his own rare lack of confidence and help his friend traverse the mental land
mines that had been planted in his brain.
The doctor glanced at his wrist watch before he interjected, “Two hours – my God, it’s
been two hours already. My goal is not to make Danny regurgitate all of the
information stored in his head. That could take days. Rather, I want you, Mr.
McGarrett, to help me show him that he doesn’t need a key to share the
information with his conscious level.”
McGarrett was beginning to
understand. “And Danno can then share the information with whomever he so
chooses when he wakes up!”
“Exactly!” The doctor nodded, and then added, “And it will
minimize the number of doses of acetyl pentothal I
must administer to him.”
Kaye spoke up, frowning
slightly, “So, Doc, you’re telling us that Danny will consciously remember
everything the Arc stuffed into his head?”
Bellagio held his hand up,
“I can’t guarantee that he’ll remember everything – as a matter of fact, I
can’t promise he’ll be willing – or able – to remember any of it. But I think
it’s the safest thing to do for him at this point.”
“Then that’s what we do,”
McGarrett said with conviction, making eye contact with each man in the room
before fixing his gaze on Kaye. “And then, Jonathan, you’ll be able to debrief
him yourself.”
“Okay, it makes sense,” Kaye
agreed, and
The doctor invited the
detective with his arm extended toward the door. McGarrett threw one last
glance at Kaye before leaving with Bellagio.
Trevor, upon seeing the
detective return with his boss, slid an empty stool that had been behind him
towards the end of the recliner. McGarrett gave the slightest acknowledgement
and took a seat.
The doctor began speaking
before he was completely situated on his stool. “Danny, I want you to know that
someone else is here with us.” He gave a nod of encouragement to Steve.
Say the right thing…say the right thing, He silently recited his mantra before he spoke.
“Danno…Danno…I’m right here with you, and I’m going to be with you every step
of the way. Is that okay with you?”
“Steve.” One word came out,
nothing else. Dan’s eyes were closed and his head rested in the special
indentation meant for that on the recliner.
“Do you want me to stay with
you?”
“Steve…yes…stay…” A hint of
relief seemed present in the young man’s voice.
“Good – then I’ll stay.
Doctor Bellagio is here too, and everything is fine.” McGarrett did his best to
sound calm despite the pressure in his gut telling him that he was playing with
fire.
The doctor nodded with
approval. “Danny, we’re going to talk about a door. It’s not a real door –
rather, it’s a door in your mind. Now this door is closed right now, and we
need to open it so that you may know what’s behind the door. We don’t have a key, but that’s okay – you can open the door
anyway. You don’t need a key, because the door is not locked. Do you
understand?”
“What door?” A frown
flickered momentarily on the young man’s face.
“I’m going to show you the
door in just a moment by telling you where to look. When I tell you, you must
not demand a key, because you do not need a key. Do you trust Steve?”
“Yes.”
“Then when he tells you that
you do not need a key to reveal the information to yourself and to him, will
you know that this is true?”
“Yes.”
Bellagio nodded at McGarrett
and motioned for him to speak.
“Danno, whatever you were
told about the information behind the door doesn’t matter now. I’m telling you
that you do not need a key.” Steve spoke softly, but emphatically, hoping that
he was taking the doctor’s lead appropriately. “Do you understand?”
“I don’t need a key,” Dan
replied.
The physician gave a brief
nod of encouragement to Steve, who was feeling as insecure about his role in
this as he had felt about anything for many years. Not generally one to take
stock in the words of a psychiatric professional, it was disconcerting for the
detective to feel so dependent on the man’s expertise in this shadow world of
the subconscious.
Bellagio removed a syringe
from his bag, filled it from a small glass bottle, and deftly injected it into
Dan’s IV line. As he did this, Trevor pulled out two wrist restraints, and
secured Williams’ hands to the arm rests. No reaction came from the subject as
the medical aide performed this duty. Steve was horrified that the doctor saw
the necessity to restrain his friend, but held his tongue as he harkened almost
instantly to the struggle at
Bellagio flipped a page on
his notebook and peered through the glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“Very well, Danny. Then I will tell you now that the signal is Romeo
Foxtrot.” The words were so simple. The
doctor paused to study his patient.
McGarrett tensed visibly,
waiting for, fearing some explosive reaction.
Dan frowned, but said
nothing and did not so much as tug at the restraints.
Bellagio waited about thirty
seconds, and then cocked his head in such a way that Trevor knew he was
expecting a report.
Trevor complied in a soft
voice. “Heart rate’s up from 68 to 85. Respirations are up a little, and he’s
still in normal sinus rhythm.”
Bellagio acknowledged the
information without speaking with a simple nod of his head before he spoke
again to his patient. “Danny, behind the Romeo Foxtrot door, there is
information. Open the door and reveal it to yourself. Can you do that?”
Dan began to fidget a little
and twist his wrists against the restraints, not violently, but enough to cause
the doctor to nod at the head of Five-0.
Taking his queue, the
detective spoke. “Danno, remember that you do not need a key to share this
information with yourself. Do you understand?”
The young man continued
squirming and moaned softly. His breathing had become shallow, and had a
panicky sound to it Steve thought as he asked again a little more emphatically,
“Danno, do you understand?”
“No key?”
“No key,” Steve confirmed
emphatically. “You may know this information, and share it with those you
trust. Do you understand?”
“Ye—yes.” Williams was almost panting at this point, and
McGarrett looked at Bellagio to gauge his reaction to his friend’s condition.
Trevor injected, “Heart
rate’s up to 110, respirations – 80.”
The doctor pressed on.
“Danny, is the door open?”
“I— I said yes, sir. I said
yes, sir, but I didn’t do it,” the young man breathed the words, fear evident
in his out-of-breath words.
“Danny, there’s nothing to
fear now. You’re looking at what was – not what is.” The doctor’s voice was
calm and soothing. He gave a quick nod to McGarrett, who picked up the thread.
“Danno, stay here with me.
You’re okay.”
“Steve…Steve…so much…so…”
Dan still panted, but fidgeted less.
“Danny, you must remember
this information when you wake up.” Bellagio started to say something else, but
Trevor jumped in suddenly.
“Doctor, he’s throwing
PVC’s!”
Bellagio’s head snapped up to the heart monitor to observe the
erratic blips that invaded the rhythmic beating of the patient’s heart. “Time’s
up,” he said quickly under his breath, but before he could say anything else,
Dan gasped softly and went limp.
McGarrett stood helplessly
as he watched the little green blip take on a different character than had been
displayed previously. His own heart felt crushed in his chest as he knew
realized something was drastically wrong.
Trevor shouted now, “He’s in
V-Fib!”
“Get him on the floor!”
Bellagio commanded as he moved to un-strap Dan’s wrists.
All three men moved quickly
and lifted the unconscious man from the recliner to tile. As Trevor turned on a
portable cardiac defibrillator and squirted conducting lubricant on the cardiac
paddles, Bellagio popped Dan in the chest with his fist – a precordial
thump that made McGarrett jump slightly.
“Charge to
400 watt-seconds!” Bellagio
barked as Lane and Kaye rushed into the room, no longer willing to observe from
the beyond the mirror. Trevor handed the doctor the paddles and leaned back.
“Clear!” came the doctor’s
warning. A second later he placed the paddles on Williams’ chest and pressed
the button under his right thumb. Dan’s body arced as the volts coursed
through. Everyone in the room followed the leads of the medical personnel as
their eyes jumped to the heart monitor.
Almost at once, a rhythm
re-appeared on the monitor.
“Sinus rhythm,” Trevor
breathed, and Bellagio blew out a breath and shook his head.
Beads of sweat were now
visible on the physician’s head. He was a psychiatrist and did not normally find
himself dealing with life and death situations. The man was well versed in the
rudiments of dealing with cardiac problems, but that did not make him any less
tense when the situation arose. He made eye contact with the one person in the
room more tense than him.
McGarrett spoke first. “What happened? Is he all right now?” Steve
moved to kneel close to his friend as he stared at the doctor, whose expression
did nothing to alleviate the abject terror that had built up in the detective.
Accustomed to being able to take action to change the course of events, he
found his lack of knowledge about what had just happened and what should be
done to help his friend all the more gut-wrenching.
Bellagio took Dan’s carotid pulse before he responded, “The
last dose of acetyl pentothal must have been too much
for him. His vitals are stabilizing now.”
McGarrett’s temper flared.
“You mean how soon will he be able to tell you what he
knows! Let me answer that – whenever he’s good and ready – and NOT before!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Lane started, but McGarrett cut him off.
“Forget it,” the detective
snapped – he didn’t want his attention diverted from his friend for another
second.
As if on queue, Dan let out
a soft groan and turned his head. Relief flooded McGarrett, and he touched
Williams’ head gently.
“Danno…Danno.. .Can you hear me?”
The young man moaned again
and slowly took in a breath. Ten agonizing seconds later, Dan slowly opened his
eyes and panned about the room.
“Danno, speak to me,”
McGarrett commanded gently.
Williams tried to focus on
the man, but couldn’t make the image sharp.
He knew who it was anyway. “Steve.”
“How are you?” It might’ve be a stupid question, but McGarrett didn’t know
what else to ask.
“Tired… so tired…can I
rest?” Dan could barely keep his eyes open and had no thought to ask what had
happened.
“Of course, rest, my
friend,” Steve replied gently, and Dan’s eyes closed.
“He’ll probably need at
least an hour to shake off the immediate effects of the drug, and then I dare
say he’ll need to sleep another twelve hours after he eats something.”
“Does he need to be
monitored medically?” McGarrett could not shake the memory of the erratic blip
on the heart monitor.
“He’s out of immediate
danger now, but I’d like to keep an eye on him for a couple hours.” Bellagio
pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face.
“Doctor, do you have a sense
that you were successful?” Kaye inquired, careful to not seem overly anxious.
He didn’t want the very defensive cop kneeling nearby to over-react to his
question.
Jonathan Kaye had known
Steve McGarrett for numerous years, and in all that time, he had never seen the
man acknowledge an emotional attachment for anyone. To the contrary, the
military commander with whom he began his association was renowned not only for
his incredible investigative successes, but also for his aloof mystique and the
solitary existence he seemed to lead. Now, it was amazing indeed to Kaye to see
this pillar of discipline and self-control behave so
protectively over his man. Clearly, McGarrett still ruled with an iron fist,
but he had somehow let down his defenses and allowed this young man inside the
protective shell that surrounded him.
Bellagio rubbed his neck. “I
would’ve preferred to have had the opportunity to reinforce the instruction,
but there was only so much I could do with the time that we had. We’re just
fortunate that he trusts Mr. McGarrett like he does. Otherwise, I’m convinced
that we would never extricate any information from him without the appropriate
key codes.”
*****
“The one that got away…”
“Correction—the
one that you released!” The voice
hissed.
“How could anyone have seen
this coming?” responded the defensive voice. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’ll
be handled in short order now.”
“We have a different problem
now that your first team blew it, George. Kaye’s had his hooks into him all
day. With the nature of the programming, they may or may not have learned
anything damaging. We need to know what he’s revealed before he goes away. I’ll
handle this myself.”
*****
“The tremor is a common side
effect of the drugs. It’ll dissipate over the course of the next twenty four
hours or so,” Bellagio reassured his patient, who’d slept in the recliner for
almost three hours before he began to stir. The doctor, with McGarrett hovering
nearby, now explained Dan’s shaking hands to him as he evaluated the young man.
“Any headache or chest pain?”
Dan rubbed the center of his
chest lightly with his knuckles. “My chest – it feels like someone pitched a
baseball at me.”
The doctor knew that was
from his own fist and was not heavily concerned.
Dan continued, “And my guts
are shaking right along with my hands.”
“Another
regrettable side effect that will go away soon. Your blood pressure is slightly elevated, but your
respirations have slowed dramatically. You should be feeling much better by
tomorrow.”
The doctor had been spelled
briefly by Trevor, but remained at Dan’s side with McGarrett for the duration
of his sleep. Kaye and Lane left and returned just as Bellagio completed his
examination with Carter Brinks in tow.
The sight of the man annoyed
McGarrett. He was feeling about fed up with everything and everybody associated
with this situation. The detective had a sense that everyone involved had an
agenda that did not necessarily involve his friend’s best interests.
Heart still heavy with
guilt, he had to include himself in the group – it was after all he who had initiated
the whole affair. Regret was an emotion far more familiar to Williams than to
McGarrett. Dan second-guessed himself with regularity – a practice that his
boss worked constantly to cast out of his detective’s repertoire of habits. The
head of Five-0 did not regularly look back at a situation and decide that he’d
made the wrong choice. He knew that his path was not always the popular route,
but in his heart, he usually knew the right thing to do – easy or difficult –
right off the bat. The
“Danny, how are you
feeling?” Brinks asked. His concern sounded genuine enough, but both detectives
had been left with a sour taste in their mouths from their previous encounter
with the agent, and so were more suspicious as a result.
“I’ve been better, thanks,”
Dan responded softly, pushing away a tray with coffee and a flaccid, white
bread sandwich with an ambiguous slice of lunch meat snuggled next to a wilted
lettuce leaf.
“What brings you back to
paradise, Brinks?” McGarrett asked, an artificial smile playing on his lips.
“Just
tying up the last of the loose ends on the attempted bombing. You two did a bang-up job on this thing if you don’t
mind my saying so.” Brinks nodded towards the two detectives, and then added,
“Really saved the day!”
The head of Five-0 gave a
slight nod of acknowledgement, but said nothing before turning his attention
back to his detective.
“So, what happens next?” Dan
asked softly. He wanted nothing more than to put this business behind him now and
get on with just being a cop.
Bellagio leaned forward far
enough to take Dan’s pulse, and then responded. “Well, I have to insist that
you take a day or so to recover physically. And you need this time to
assimilate any new information that may be available to you now.”
Kaye spoke up, “What do mean
by assimilate new information, Doc? Doesn’t Danny know what he knows now?”
The doctor shrugged and
folded his arms. “Not necessarily. There is a difference between having data
available and being aware that you have it. We will have to prepare questions,
and as our friend is presented with these questions, he will hopefully be able
to flesh out the details on his own.”
“So, for example,” Brinks
announced looking at Williams, “I could ask you, Danny, whether you have any
recollection of the identities of your South American undercover contacts.” He
glanced at the doctor before re-fixing his gaze on the detective, who was
watching him through weary eyes. “And you would mull it over for a moment and
respond…” He gestured with his hand in a rolling motion, indicating that he
wanted Dan to finish the sentence.
McGarrett stood, and started
to let the agent know that there would be no answers today, but Williams gently
touched his arm.
“Mr. Brinks, I hate to be
the bearer of bad news, but I’m not sure I remember anything more than I did
yesterday.”
“Nothing? You remember nothing?” Brinks sounded appalled.
Bellagio offered, “As I said
earlier – he may begin to remember things in the coming hours, or he may
remember nothing – ever. We didn’t have the time while he was under to
reinforce the instruction to remember.”
Brinks pushed, “So you might
have to put him under again to—”
With that last phrase still
hanging in the air, McGarrett exploded, “Nobody’s doing anything else to him!
Whatever he remembers on his own is what you’ve got!”
Brinks remembered only too
well the angry detective’s assault on Doctor Devine, and he stepped back several
paces. Dan glanced gratefully at his boss, and didn’t feel the need to respond
to Brinks – his protector was there and on the job.
McGarrett’s words were
reinforced by Bellagio. “I must agree with Mr. McGarrett. It’s
all too clear that even a single additional dose of acetyl pentothal could kill
him. I wouldn’t risk it.” The man re-inserted his stethoscope into his ears and
placed the pad on his patient’s chest to assure himself
that everything was back to normal.
“Carter, Steve’s absolutely
right,” Kaye intervened. “We’ve put Danny through enough. Can I suggest that
the best we can do at this point is to convene tomorrow for a few hours to
formulate some questions.” He turned to Williams. “I don’t think you need to be
here for that part of our little effort. And then, the next day, we can
reconvene and see if our questions yield any fruit. Does that sound acceptable
to everyone?” He was looking at Dan, as was everyone else in the room.
Before the young man could
answer, Steve spoke softly to him. “You don’t have to do anything else if you
don’t want to. We can call it quits here and now, and be done with it.” The words were just a supportive reminder
that McGarrett would see to it that Williams called the shots on this.
Dan couldn’t help but let a
flicker of a smile cross his lips as he sighed. “I think Mr. Kaye has a
reasonable plan. I want to help if I can.” It would be a shame to let evildoers
go unpunished if he could do something to prevent it – not that he was certain
at this point what that something was.
*****
Dan sat propped up in the
bed in Steve’s guestroom, sipping a cup of coffee, mindlessly rubbing his very
sore chest with his other hand. Despite ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, he
still looked and sounded drained to his boss, who sat astraddle a kitchen chair
at the foot of the bed, arms resting on its back.
Noticing that Williams was
observing the coffee jiggling in the cup because of the slight tremor in his
hand, he assured, “You remember the doc said that’ll go away in the next day or
so.”
Dan grimaced slightly, but
didn’t say anything. It was very disturbing for the sharpshooter to have
trembling hands – the previous day had been traumatic enough without having to
deal with residual physical effects.
In the hours after the
session with the doctor, Steve opted to return Dan to his place and let him
sleep off the effects of the drugs. He himself dozed off and on throughout the
night, too keyed up and concerned about the possibility of another attempt on
Williams’ life to succumb to slumber. The aftermath of long-duration, deep,
drug-induced hypnotic sessions, Bellagio assured the group the night before,
was usually an unlikely combination of exhaustion and frayed nerves. Steve
wondered as his friend slept whose nerves the doctor had been discussing.
McGarrett decided that he
would sit in on the question-building session, and Williams, balking at staying
in bed all day, insisted that he would be fine at the Palace.
“Steve, you know I’ve got
enough paperwork to keep me chained to my desk for days. I feel okay – really.”
Dan implored his boss. Steve eyed his friend for a moment. He probably would be
safer there than anywhere else.
McGarrett relented. “Yeah,
okay, but ONLY if you get an HPD escort into the office. Remember, we’re not out of the woods yet. And
I’ll let Kono and Chin know to keep their eyes open.”
Williams sighed in
exasperation, but agreed. He knew that he wouldn’t win this argument. At least
his boss was not going to sentence him to house arrest all day.
*****
Not only did Hawaii’s top
detective put his office on notice that Williams was the target of threats from
unidentified sources, he put the word out to all HPD shifts – he made it known
that one of their own was under fire. He knew there was very little the law
enforcement community could do to catch the insidious culprits, who could blend
into the population of respectable humanity as needed, but perhaps they could
provide his detective with a nominal layer of additional protection. After all,
there was no cop that didn’t know Williams. His position as second-in-command
made him a high-profile figure in law enforcement circles, not to mention the
fact that McGarrett recruited him from HPD.
Dan was well-liked amongst
the rank-and-file despite the fact that he’d been promoted over many more
seasoned veterans on the force. The second-in-command slot was a coveted
position, and there had been much controversy when McGarrett offered it to his
newest and youngest detective. But it became obvious fairly quickly that the
job – while prestigious – was difficult, time-consuming, and required more
sacrifices than most cops would’ve been willing to make. So, most cops on the
force wished Williams well. Now, any extra eyes that McGarrett could train on
the situation could be advantageous in some as-yet unknown capacity.
McGarrett accompanied
Williams to his apartment so that he could shower and get dressed for work. The
pair carefully did a quick search of the premises to insure that the detective
had had no unwelcome visitors in his absence. As soon as the head of Five-0 was
comfortable that his detective was relatively safe, he left and made a quick
stop at the office to brief his staff and check his IN box before rushing off
for the NIC.
*****
“Hi,
Danny! What’s shakin’?”
The HPD officer was sitting in his cruiser outside Williams’ garage as he
pulled out in his LTD
Steve thought of everything, Dan mused as he waved at the officer. While he knew
his boss was acting out of concern for him, it was still bothersome that he was
to be tailed to the office. A whole force full of babysitters
at his disposal. There was no getting around Steve on this one. He shook
his head and pulled into traffic.
*****
Just being back in his
office wading through the mundane paperwork that had stacked up in his absence
made Dan feel more relaxed than he’d felt in days. He had the urge to leave
with Kono and Chin to track down some leads on a couple of cases being worked,
but remembered his promise to Steve that he would not leave the office until
the okay came from the lead detective’s mouth. His hands were shaking a little
less with each passing hour, and the tremors in his stomach were all but gone.
There were new memories that would occasionally pop into his head or pass through
his thoughts – a very disrupting sensation, -- but he did his best to keep them
on the back burner in his mind as he traversed his way through various police
reports and requisition forms.
At one point, however, he
had to stop and stand in amazement. “Hablo
espańol – Otra respuesta!” He had to laugh. How could he have
forgotten that he spoke Spanish? The memory of the President Salazar addressing
him in Spanish before the summit sprang to mind. He’d communicated with the man
almost exclusively in Spanish during their escape and arduous trek to freedom.
What made him forget that?
May snapped her head in his
direction. “What?” The detective had been more quiet than usual, so his sudden
outburst caught the secretary off guard.
Mildly embarrassed that he’d
forgotten where he was for a moment, he explained, “I’m sorry. I – uh studied
Spanish in school, and I thought I’d forgotten most of it.”
“I studied German in high
school, but the only thing I can remember is Guten
Tag!” May’s recollection made Dan step towards her, unabashed shock registering
on his face.
“Ich kann Deutsch! Ich kann
auch Deutsch! Überraschen!”
“You speak German too?” May
was surprised at the revelation, but even more surprised that the detective
seemed so amazed.
Dan smiled again, and shook
his head. “It’s incredible…” His voice tapered to a whisper.
Before May could inquire
further, the phone rang. “Five-0,” she chirped. A few seconds of listening
ensued before she handed the phone to Williams. “Message from Steve,” she said
softly to his unasked question.
“This is Williams.”
“Detective Williams, this is
Lieutenant Ridley at the NIC. I’m to convey a message to you from Mr.
McGarrett.”
The unfamiliar voice played
a bit to Dan’s increased paranoia about out-of-the-ordinary situations. “Why
didn’t he call me directly?”
“Sir, he’s in a meeting with
Mr. Kaye.”
“Okay, so what’s the
message?”
“Mr. McGarrett would like
for you to meet his group at the back entrance to Wahiawa Station as soon as
possible.”
Dan was instantly suspicious.
“There’s no back entrance to Wahiawa Station.”
“With all due respect, sir,
there is. It’s fairly new, and not open for general traffic. You’ll proceed up
803 past Schofield Barracks about three miles. The new gate isn’t marked yet,
but there will be an MP on duty.”
Not ready to yield to the
request, Dan pressed the voice. “This doesn’t sound like something Steve would
want me to do, so with all due respect to YOU, sir, why should I follow these
instructions?”
Dan could hear some
shuffling in the background, and then he heard the voice repeat his question to
someone else. A moment later, the
Lieutenant returned to the line. “Did you hear that, sir?”
Dan sighed. “No, I did not.”
“If I may, sir, Mr.
McGarrett says that you should follow these instructions, quote, because I’m the
boss, Danno.”
For the first time since the
conversation began, Williams had a sense that he was receiving a message from Steve.
“Okay,” Dan admitted with a shrug, “THAT sounds like him. Tell him I’m on my
way.” With that, he handed the phone back to May.
“What’s up?” She asked as
she reset the phone back on its cradle, sensing the young man’s tension.
Dan grabbed his jacket from
the rack in his office as he answered, “I don’t know.” The detective could feel
the tremor in his stomach again.
May tried
again. “Should you leave? Steve said—”
Dan spoke before she
finished her thought. “Steve said to stay here until I heard from him. Well, I
just heard from him, and the last thing I want to do today is disobey an order!”
He flashed a smile back at the secretary as he reached the outer office door. “Auf wieder sehen,
Liebchen!”
The confident gesture made
May feel better, but it did little to soothe Dan’s nerves.
This was the third time in recent weeks that his boss had cryptically summoned
him to a meeting at one of the military facilities in the area. Each time
before, something horrible had come to light. He wondered as he trotted to his
car how much more bad news he could take.
*****
“May, put Danno on.”
McGarrett’s voice sounded like an angry command to the uninitiated, but May
knew that it was just her boss’s way. This time though the request was
confusing. It had been more than thirty minutes since the head of Five-0 had sent
for his second-in-command.
“What? I thought he’d be
with you by now,” May’s voice sounded perplexed.
“What do you mean? With me?”
The secretary, utterly
confused, explained the phone call that she’d overheard, and how the
second-in-command, puzzled at what he clearly thought were instructions strange
enough to question, headed out the door to obey his boss.
“Where was he supposed to
go?”
“I’m not sure, boss – I just
know that Danny was confused.”
With that news, McGarrett
did not have a thought of courtesy as a fist had grabbed his heart and begun to
squeeze. He pressed the switch hook, and dialed direct to HPD dispatch.
“This is McGarrett. I need a
patch to Williams now!”
The urgency in his voice was
not lost on the dispatcher, “Yessir!”
*****
“I don’t understand this at
all.” Dan folded his arms as he leaned on his sedan.
The MP, a man with whom Dan
was not familiar, responded, “I apologize for the inconvenience. Someone will
be here to unlock the gate shortly. I’m just following orders.”
“You and me both,” the
detective responded as he regarded the barrel-chested man with him.
The espionage-related events
of the past weeks were disconcerting to him, and, he had to admit, might be
making him feel a little un-necessarily paranoid. After all, how many times had
his boss given him what seemed to be strange instructions only to have them
revealed to be part of a brilliant plan? As annoyed as he felt, he was
confident that Steve would have a good explanation for the mysterious
instructions. Before his thoughts could turn elsewhere, his police radio
crackled.
“Five-Oh-Two- Dispatch. I
have a patch from McGarrett!”
Williams started to reach
into his car to grab the microphone, “Good! Maybe we’ll have an answer as to
why we’re standing here in the middle of nowhere!”
His comment to the MP was met with a short-lived, but sharp pain in the back of
his neck. Gasping, he tried to put his hand on the offended area, but lost all
sensation and vision before he could take another step. There was no time to
consider what was happening. An almost instant, black sleep enveloped him and
took him away from the concerns of the moment.
The “MP” managed to catch
the collapsing officer as he retrieved the syringe which he had calmly and
forcefully plunged into the man’s neck. A vanilla-colored, hearse-style
ambulance tore into the pull-off, and before it stopped completely, two men in
white medical jackets jumped out, collected Williams’ limp form, and strapped
him onto a gurney in the back of their vehicle.
“You’re late!”
the military imposter hissed at the passenger in the vehicle as the window
rolled down.
A voice from
inside ignored the complaint and barked, “Hide the car! Roll it down that embankment if you have to – just get it out of
sight now!”
The soldier nodded, and with
that, he set about following his orders as the van sped off, leaving a
billowing cloud of dust in its wake until it hit the pavement again.
“McGarrett
to Williams! Danno! Come in!” The
man trotted off to a vehicle hidden in the brush and drove off, leaving the desperate
voice echoing over the speaker of the now-invisible car.
*****
“He seemed so—so puzzled
over your— I mean— the instructions,” May’s lower lip quivered as she re-told
the story to her boss and Kono.
“It’ll be okay, Love.” McGarrett
made a half-hearted attempt to assuage her fears, but could do nothing to calm
his insides.
He knew the element that had
his friend probably wanted him dead. Why they went to such lengths to lure him
so far from the office to do him in was the question that burned in the
detective’s mind. A sharpshooter could have downed him in the parking lot and
that would have been the end of it – or so they would believe until they found
an avenging detective hot on their trail. McGarrett swore that whoever did this would pay. They would pay if it took him
the rest of his life.
Chin approached, his
normally un-readable expression revealing that he had bad news. “They found
Danny’s car, Steve – off of 803 a few miles past Schofield Barracks, in some
bushes. It looks like it was pushed off the road – not driven. Somebody on a
bike heard the police radio squawking. No signs of a struggle.”
McGarrett rubbed his eyes. Little
sleep the night before was definitely taking a toll on his analytical
abilities. “Why make him drive out there if all they wanted to do was kill
him?”
Kono shrugged. “Maybe they
needed something from him?” It was hard for the other two detectives to assist
their boss on this since they were not privy to all of the clues in the case.
“But
what?” Chin asked.
The Oriental detective’s
question helped McGarrett break through to the answer. He spoke a little more
loudly and with certainty. “What everyone in this sordid mess wants from Danno
– information!” The lead detective began pacing and
snapping his fingers, a habit the man had when he was concentrating. “But they
tried to run him down before. What changed? What changed?” He spun suddenly to look at his detectives.
“That’s it! Before the—the meeting at the NIC with Kaye, they knew who knew
their secret. It was only Danno. After the meeting, they didn’t know that Danno
was still the only one who knew – IF he knew.”
Chin, Kono, and May
exchanged looks with each other. Their boss was not making complete sense.
Oblivious to his staff’s confusion, McGarrett pressed on with his train of
thought.
“So now, they have to grab
Danno to try to find out what he knows and whom he told.”
“What does Danny know that
they don’t want him to know?” Kono asked.
Still distracted McGarrett
answered quickly, “I don’t know – and Danno may not know either.” With that,
their boss strode towards the door, “Keep on the car, any witnesses – you know
the drill! I’ll be at the NIC!”
The detective was gone
before anyone could formulate a question.
*****
Carter Brinks crumpled the
empty cigarette pack and stuffed it in his pocket, mindful of leaving evidence
that could implicate him in a kidnapping. He paced at the foot of the gurney to
which his victim was strapped.
Wrists and ankles buckled to
the bed with worn leather, hospital restraints, Dan Williams writhed weakly to
free himself, not coherent enough to realize the
battle was in vain. Staring blankly at the ceiling and taking in rhythmic
shallow breaths, he whispered continuously, “No…no…no…no…”
A very short, stocky man
with a shock of bushy, dark brown hair and matching eye brows pulled a small
medical flashlight from his white doctor’s coat and flicked it across Dan’s
eyes a few times. He looked up at the man at the foot of the bed.
“He’s had enough, Brinks. I
can’t tell if he’s not talking because he doesn’t know or because he’s just not
willing to cooperate. Either way, administering anything else without his
cooperation will buy you nothing, but a catatonic – or dead – subject!”
Brinks kicked a chair
violently across the room. “Cooperation, eh?” He
rushed to the head of the bed and spoke to his oblivious victim. “You will
cooperate, Williams! I really wanted to do this the easy way – you tell me what
I need to know – I release you, albeit a little dazed and confused, a little
amnesia perhaps after a car accident – I would’ve come up with something! But
now, I’m going to have to up the ante in this deal!”
*****
McGarrett sat in the
conference room at the NIC with Jonathan Kaye and Doctor Bellagio and laid out
his theory.
“It makes sense, Steve, but
whoever has Danny will have to have access to a doctor who knows the Arc
protocol.” Kaye twirled the swizzle stick in his coffee as he mused.
Bellagio nodded. “Any
reputable physician – knowledgeable in the protocol – would take a blood level
for acetyl pentothal before proceeding, and he would
see that additional doses could be fatal.”
Through grinding teeth, the
detective spoke. “We’re not talking about reputable people here, Doc. We’re
dealing with kidnappers and murderers.”
Kaye spoke up. “Well, I’ve
got everything we have on the Arc being flown in from D.C. Unfortunately,
there’s not much. They covered their tracks extremely well. That’s why it was
such a surprise to learn that they’d allowed Danny to—to move on.”
McGarrett leaned back in his
chair and rubbed his temple. “Yeah. I guess his
high-profile engagement made it risky to get rid of him, and apparent lack of
ambition made him a low risk to release.”
The three men heard the
cipher lock clicking, and looked to the door to see who was joining them.
Brinks opened the door a few inches and peeked in before entering the room and
taking a seat at the table.
“The Arc files should be
here later on tonight. Jonathan, do you need me to stay and work on this? I
imagine there’ll be quite a bit of information on the South American targets.”
Brinks asked.
The fact
that this man was interested in the files primarily to retrieve data for his
area of responsibility and not to search for clues that would return Williams
to him made Steve bristle, but he said nothing.
“Steve, what do you think?”
Kaye turned to Steve.
“I think I need to be here
to go through those files for clues. By the way, Brinks, where were you
earlier?” McGarrett, anger tightly controlled, but thinly veiled, wanted Brinks
to know that nobody would be above suspicion in his investigation.
Brinks gave an inaudible
gasp, but recovered before anyone noticed his dismay. This cop was definitely
an intimidating character, but the time was fast approaching where he wouldn’t
have to take the disrespect from him anymore. Hold your tongue just a little while longer…
The agent’s reply was smooth
and unruffled. “Leave no stone unturned,
eh, McGarrett?” He threw a glance at Kaye, but the man seemed to be allowing
the detective to run the show. “I was doing what I returned to
Jonathan agreed. “And I in
turn added them to the master list of questions which we compiled earlier
today.”
“Look, McGarrett, I’m sorry
about your man – really, I am.” Brinks offered, and then turned to Kaye
quickly. “Jonathan, without Williams here to answer my questions, it’s pretty
fruitless for me to remain much longer, so if you don’t need me here, I’ll
probably head back to D.C. sometime tomorrow.”
The implication
of Brinks’ words in McGarrett’s mind were that the agent did not expect
Dan to return. That the man dare to even think such an
appalling thought made McGarrett’s blood pressure rise.
“I’m not sure what you can
do at this point, Carter, so you might as well head back.” Jonathan spoke
quietly.
Brinks rose and left without
so much as a glance McGarrett, whose eyes pierced him as he moved away from the
table.
As soon as Brinks was out of
earshot, McGarrett spoke up. “Jonathan, I want carte blanche with those Arc
files, and I won’t have any interference from him!” He motioned with his eyes towards
the door from which Brinks had just made his exodus.
Kaye knew the determined
detective well enough to know that when he was on a mission, nothing short of
his own death would stop him. “You’ll have it, and don’t worry about Brinks.”
*****
McGarrett sped from the NIC
towards the place where Danno’s car had been found. Until the Arc files arrived
or his detectives turned up some new lead he could follow, there was very
little he could do to bring his missing officer home. For reasons he didn’t understand,
he was drawn to the last place he knew his friend had been.
Brinks, he mused, was not
the straight shooter he professed to be. The detective could feel it more than
he had evidence to prove it. He momentarily played with the possibility that he
was suspicious of the man because of his part in the
The crackle of the police
radio snapped back to the moment.
“Dispatch to Five-0 One. I
have a patch for you.”
“Dispatch, this is
Five-0-One. Put it through,” McGarrett snapped. Please let it be good news.
“McGarrett, this is Carter
Brinks. It turns out that I’ll be leaving this evening, and I’ve turned up a
couple of items that may prove very helpful to you in your search.”
Steve eyed the microphone
for a moment suspiciously, wondering whether the man could possibly have any
useful information, but decided it was best not to overlook any tidbit no
matter what the source. “Where are you?”
“I’m in
“Conveniently enough, I’m in
the vicinity. I’ll come to you. Exactly where are you?”
Brinks described a payphone
near the side of the road off of the main drag through the town, and McGarrett
told him to wait there.
Within five minutes, the
detective pulled his LTD up beside a beige sedan. A man in an MP’s uniform sat
behind the wheel of the vehicle, and he recognized Brinks, sitting
incongruously in the back seat of the sedan.
He stepped out of his car
and undid the snap on his holster in one movement. All of his cop instincts
screamed “suspicious situation,” so he moved cautiously around his car and, as
he did so, the MP got out of the car and opened the back driver’s seat door.
“Sir,” the soldier snapped
the greeting.
McGarrett glanced at the
man, but was more interested in his passenger. He bent over and started to ask
Brinks what the Hell was going on, but was suddenly overcome with an agonizing pain
in the back of his neck. He knew he was falling towards Brinks’ smiling face as
he blacked out, but could do nothing to stop his tumble.
*****
McGarrett tried to bring his
hand up to touch the back of his pained neck, but something blocked his progress.
As he struggled to open his eyes, a trepidation built
up in him. He felt almost strangled with a cloth gag stuffed deep into the back
of his mouth, but he forced himself to remain calm. He slowly opened his eyes
and lifted his spinning head from his chest. He could feel that his legs were
bound to the ch
The room definitely appeared
to be in a medical facility. Various pieces of medical equipment were situated
nearby. He was instantly more alert as he observed the gurney not more than
five feet in front of him, Dan, strapped to the bed
was the focus of the other two men in the room. Their backs were to Steve, but
he recognized Brinks. The other man, in a doctor’s white coat and brown suit
pants, he’d never seen before. He wished fervently that he could make eye
contact with Williams, but the two men would have had to step aside and Dan
would’ve had to look to his right.
Relief was the predominant
emotion. The sight of Williams – at least alive and now in his presence –
returned a measure of power and control – real or imagined – over the situation
to the detective. Now, all he had to do was find a way to free himself, overpower the two men in the room, and rescue his
friend. He didn’t know how he would do it just yet, but he had a clear and
specific objective, which was more than he had a few hours earlier.
The man McGarrett presumed
to be a physician was taking his Williams’ carotid pulse, his fingers resting
on the side of the patient’s neck as he marked time on his wrist watch. Brinks
turned and paced to the foot of the gurney, enabling McGarrett to get a better
look at his detective.
Dan was conscious, but
appeared confused, weak, and agitated. His wrists were raw enough to be oozing
blood. McGarrett could see the detective’s hands trembling, and knew he had to
be back under the influence of the acetyl whatever, enduring the discomfort of
over-medication. The sight made the detective give a single violent tug at his
restraints. He knew it was futile, but the desire to vent his rage at his
friend’s treatment was overwhelming.
The medical man spoke up,
apparently at a loss for what to do. “It would’ve been very helpful to know his
previous dosages.”
“Well, the sooner we welcome
him back into reality, the better.” He looked to his left to check on
McGarrett, who met his gaze with a hateful stare. The sight of the angry
detective visibly cheered the agent. No longer intimidated by the man who could
not lift a finger to do him physical harm – as much as he obviously wanted to –
Brinks finished his thought as he moved closer to McGarrett. “Because I have it
on very good authority that our boy will do whatever he has to in order to
preserve the life of this one here, won’t he – Steve?”
Acknowledging to himself
alone the cruel twist of fate that he – Steve McGarrett – had given this man
the knowledge to manipulate Williams, the detective did his level best to keep
a lid on the rage and frustration that burned in him. The only way out of this
mess would be to keep a cool head and be alert for any opportunity to gain an
advantage. So, Steve willed himself to not react to any goading that came his
way.
“Oh, I know what you’re
thinking, but you’re wrong! I never wanted to hurt him – I don’t know who tried
to terminate him the other day. All I want – need – are the names of the Arc
informants in
McGarrett could feel his
skin crawl at the man’s moist breath blew into his ear.
Brinks came around and moved
to stand next to Williams, who thrashed only occasionally now as he hovered in
the zone of semi-consciousness, unmindful of his boss’s presence.
“He may be one of the last
of the innocents to hold this information. If I can get him to reveal even a
few of the moles, it could further
Brinks walked around to lean
his back on the foot of the gurney, arms folded arrogantly. So enjoying his
dominance over this detective who scared him and
obviously didn’t think much of him, the man did not notice the door from the
hallway push open a few inches.
He smiled and addressed the
McGarrett again. “Despite what you think --- and not that it matters -- I’m not
a bad guy.”
McGarrett would’ve been
interested in what warped logic this twisted agent used to justify the murder
of innocent people in the name of any purportedly noble cause, but the
opportunity was suddenly taken from Brinks as the door from the hallway swung
back. The tall figure in the doorway leveled a .44 Magnum at the two surprised
captors-turned-captives. For a fraction of a second, Steve had a fleeting
thought that they might be rescued, but that hope disintegrated almost
instantly. The doctor, clearly frightened, backed away from Williams. Brinks
tensed, but stood his ground.
“Whether
or not you’re a ‘bad’ guy is superseded by the fact that you’re an idiot.” The distinguished voice was slightly muffled by the startling, if not frightening, skeleton mask the man wore.
There was a nasal refinement in his speech that harkened McGarrett to the
northeastern
“How did you—Where—” Brinks
sputtered, apparently undecided over whether to be outraged at the intrusion or
afraid for his life.
As the
skeleton man stepped into the room, three other armed men, faces also hidden
behind cheap, plastic children’s masks brushed past him to provide further
cover and security for their leader, who cut off Brinks.
“Where are your men?
Obviously, when you use inferior help, you get an inferior result.”
The man, attired in a
high-end dark business suit, surveyed the scene. As he eyed McGarrett, the
detective had the distinct sensation that their situation had just gone from
frying pan to fire.
“Who are you? How do you
know—” Brinks started again, now less indignation came through in his voice.
Once again, the skeleton man
cut him off, this time a little more curtly. “Shut up! I will ask the
questions!”
He didn’t stop studying
McGarrett until he completed his command to Brinks, at which point he spun
quickly to look at the other captive strapped to the gurney. He moved to stand
by Dan’s head, and reached over, placed his hand on the young man’s forehead
and pulled back one of his half-open eyelids
with his thumb – a very practiced movement, McGarrett noted as he tensed in
concern for what the man intended to do to his protégé. It took the man only a
second to learn what he wanted to know from the dazed Williams, who objected
lethargically by turning his head after the offending hand was no longer
present.
“Exactly what did you give
him, Mr. Brinks? An overdose of acetyl narconal
perhaps?”
“I think it was a
combination of two drugs. We followed the Arc protocol—” Brinks defended
himself nervously. The interloper had to be an Arc refugee, the agent realized,
and knew that his circumstance was no less serious than the two detectives’.
“Oh, you followed the
protocol? Did you know that this happy little family of drugs can build up to
toxic levels in the bloodstream over a very short course of time?”
“Uh, no, I, uh—I’m no
doctor.” Beads of sweat became visible below the man’s upper lip and on his
forehead, and he glanced in the direction of his medical cohort, consciously
re-directing any blame.
The furtive peek had the
desired effect as the skeleton’s attention was drawn to Brinks’ medical man.
“Are you even a licensed physician?”
The man recoiled slightly at
the attention and stammered, “I- I am—”
Swiftly, the skeleton pulled
the .44 which he’d been holding casually with little caution to the deadly
potential of the object, and fired almost point blank at the frightened doctor,
who stumbled backward, a look of shock frozen on his face. A hole appeared
between his bushy eyebrows and a trickle of red began to course down his nose
before he could fall backward to the floor.
McGarrett, who fancied
himself hardened to most crimes, cringed at the brutality of the man now in
charge of the situation. Brinks gasped, and irrationally feeling safer near his
former prisoner, shuffled a few feet to stand next to Dan, who had reacted only
mildly to the gunshot.
“I can’t abide
incompetence,” the murderer said, anger apparent even with the mask still
seated.
Without so much as another
glance at he man whose life he’d just taken, he turned his attention back to
Dan. He leaned over him again, no more than eight inches from the detective’s
face. For the first time since McGarrett had been conscious, he saw his friend
slowly become aware of his situation – that a very
frightening image was hovering over him. Dan gave a sluggish gasp and tried in
vain to push himself away from the face.
“Don’t be afraid,” the
skeleton man intoned soothingly, as if he were
speaking to a small child, and he stroked Dan’s hair gently. “I’m here to help
you.” Although fear was apparent on the young man’s face, the words and their
tone seemed to calm him and more fully capture his attention.
He shifted slightly so that
Dan had a better line of sight to Steve to his right, and then threw a nod
towards him. “Is this man your friend?”
Williams, still gripped with
trepidation, slowly absorbed the creature’s words and then turned his head
cautiously to the right. Dilated pupils made everything blurry for him, but he
squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and then struggled to focus on the form in
the chair. The realization that it was Steve came over the course of thirty
seconds. Steve could see the trauma in his eyes as the young man reacted with
emotion.
“Steve!” Williams’ voice was
thin and hoarse. “What have they done to you?” McGarrett flinched as Dan began
to struggle against his restraints again. He seemed unaware of the damage he
was doing to wrists. “Steve,” he cried again, but the skeleton pressed him back
down onto the bed.
“Shhhhh,
it’s okay. Let me help you go to Steve.” The man confidently reassured. “Would
you like that?” His tone was patronizing, but McGarrett was certain that
Williams did not notice.
Dan nodded, “Help me,
please, help me.”
He stopped fighting his bonds
as skeleton man undid the wrist restraints. The thug in a Dracula mask stepped
up and freed the detective’s legs. The detective maintained eye contact with
the masked man, and as soon as he was freed, he stayed pressed flat against the
gurney as he slid towards the edge, never taking his eyes off of the imposing
figure suspended over him.
“Here, let me help you,” the
man said as he grabbed Dan’s arm to prevent him from tumbling head first to the
floor.
Legs too wobbly to support
him, the young man sank to the floor. He crawled to Steve and pulled himself up
to his knees using the arm rest on the chair for support.
Steve watched as Dan reached
up and struggled to untie the gag. Williams though was too dizzy and his hands
were shaking too violently to accomplish his goal. The torment in his teary
eyes was almost more than Steve could take, but there was
nothing he could do to help his friend.
Exhausted and beyond
frustration, he sank to the floor at McGarrett’s feet. “Steve…Steve…I can’t…I
can’t do it.”
At that moment, McGarrett
would have given anything to have been able to comfort his distraught friend,
but restrained as he was, he could do little more than return the pained look.
The skeleton man shook his
head at the scene and then turned and spoke harshly to the now-terrified
Brinks. “Between what Bellagio administered and what you and your inept quack
gave him, he may be useless to me! Look at him! He’s barely coherent!”
Brinks threw an
uncomfortable glance at the young man, who was crumpled on McGarrett’s shins
mumbling softly to himself.
Dan seemed now to be focused
on something that happened in the past. “I didn’t want to… I counted three
times… Then I woke up.”
“We were just trying to free
up some information about his South American contacts that is currently lost to
us—” Brinks back away from the livid figure who stepped towards him as he
spoke. “We would’ve killed him after we got what we needed. You know there’s no
way we could’ve released him after this! You obviously want him dead! What’s
the harm if take what we need before he’s neutralized?”
The conversation McGarrett
was hearing was enraging and horrifying. The inhuman animals that were fighting
over his friend seemed indifferent to their savagery, as if they were arguing
over a point of order in a meeting instead of the wanton murder of an innocent
victim. He pulled at the handcuffs despite the knowledge that they would not
break.
“You know, that might have
been the answer before we had such a dirty little situation!” the skeleton
flung the indictment with venom.
The signal was unseen, but
noticed by the man in the ghost mask as he nodded slightly, and with no
hesitance, suddenly fired his revolver in to the back of Brink’s head twice.
The pained look on the man’s face was quickly replaced
with the glassy stare of the dead. He fell unceremoniously to the floor, his
skull making a nauseating crack as it hit the tile. A red river began to flow
from Brinks’ body.
The gunshots re-oriented
Williams, who tried to concentrate on what was happening in the room. He’d been
Brinks’ prisoner, but the skeleton man rescued him. Now, he and Steve were
still prisoners of somebody, but who? He focused on
the skeleton man who began speaking.
“You WERE a bad man, Brinks,
but you weren’t a good bad man.” The skeleton man’s wrath instantly sated, he
turned to study McGarrett. “One loose end left. Steve, I apologize for what I
must now do.”
The man’s familiar tone and
words might’ve been the same if he were apologizing for a dinner cancellation
instead of the probable violence he intended. Williams watched in horror as the
skeleton man raised his weapon towards his boss.
“Don’t hurt him!” Dan cried
as he mustered the strength to rise, using Steve’s legs to support himself, and
block the gunman’s view of his friend. Wobbling, he stood his ground as he
desperately pleaded, “Please, don’t—don’t hurt him!” His gaze fixed on the
skeleton. “I’ll help you – you’ll never get what you’re after without my help.”
The skeleton man held his
hand out to the three gunmen as he regarded Dan. Williams had his attention,
McGarrett knew, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to prevent his
friend from making this deal to save him. He could hear his heart beat pounding
in his ears.
“I know how to NOT cooperate,”
Dan said with a quivering voice. “If you let him go, I’ll do whatever you tell
me to do.”
The man cocked his head and
approached the detective, who was struggling to stay upright. In a sudden,
brutal movement, he reached out, grabbed Dan by his hair, and pulled him to
within inches of his face. The young man did not put up any form of fight to
defend himself as the chilling words slipped from around the edges of the mask.
“Romeo Foxtrot – the little
assassin who couldn’t – or wouldn’t. You would have gone down in history – very
down.”
The words felt
like an electric shock to McGarrett – Assassin!
They had tried to groom Danno to assassinate somebody!
The man slipped his gun into
his belt and lifted his mask. It was clear to Steve that Dan recognized the man
as he gasped and tried to put a little space between them. As it was, the
fiend’s tight grip on the weak detective prevented anything more than an inch
of play.
“It’s you!” Dan whispered,
shrinking in terror.
Steve could now see that the
face the mask had covered was that of a man, perhaps in his mid-to-late
forties. He had a distinguished countenance, but what made him so memorable was
the man’s malevolent expression. He smiled as his gaze pierced Dan with what
seemed to be pleasure in the young man’s fear.
“I’m touched that you
remember me. I hope this convinces you that I don’t need your playmate to make
you cooperate.” He paused only for effect before continuing. “That said, things would go more quickly if we all work together on this.” The man’s voice, no longer muffled, seemed all the
more sinister. “You were my only failure – and I dare say that if they’d given
me a little more time with you, things would have turned out differently – but
I’m going to correct that today.” His grin spread into a large smile as
he threw a nod at Steve. “Clearly, I would be a fool to release him while I
want your cooperation. But I can promise you that if you do not yield to my
wishes, I will make sure that he dies a most horrible and slow death. Do we
understand each other?”
Dan nodded as best he could
with the man’s hand gripping his head so tightly. “Yes”
In the back of his mind,
Williams knew that there was no way his boss would be released after what he
had witnessed, but at least the agreement had forestalled the unthinkable. If
only the fog would lift from his thoughts. If only he didn’t feel almost too
weak to stand. If only he could stop trembling!
“Good!”
With that the skeleton man
maneuvered Dan a few feet to Brinks’ body and suddenly shoved him towards the
floor. Williams landed on the still-warm corpse, and immediately tried to push
himself away, revulsion at the proximity of the gore filling him. But the man
bent over, grabbed Dan again and re-directed him into the pool of tepid blood
at the head of the
body. Williams caught himself with his hands, but the floor was slippery with
red, and so he ended up on his chest. He was sickened, but he didn’t have the
energy to move.
Satisfied that his purpose
had been served, the skeleton man put on a mock frown. “Tsk,
tsk! Look at this mess, Romeo! It looks to me like
you might’ve been the one that killed Agent Brinks and his quack! Perhaps you
weren’t really kidnapped. Maybe you wanted to disappear? The authorities are
going to have a time sorting this mess out, aren’t they?” Then he snapped his
head in the direction of the nearest shooter.
“Take him!” The ghost man moved in, roughly collected the blood-stained
detective, and dragged him out the door.
Dread filled McGarrett at
the complete, very uncharacteristic lack of fight in his friend. In addition to
the new influx of drugs into his system, the head of Five-0 was concerned that
his second-in-command was not recovered from the heart-stopping incident the
day before.
Frankenstein and Dracula
moved in, un-attached McGarrett from his chair, and re-cuffed his hands behind
his back. As the pair of monsters strong-armed the detective towards the door,
their leader brought up the rear.
“It looks like we’ll have
the pleasure of your company for a bit longer.”
The fiend’s friendly voice
belied the evil McGarrett knew the man intended to commit. At least Danno had
bought them a little time. He prayed it would be enough.
*****
The ride to the old Quonset
hut up the unimproved dirt road to
Hold on, Danno…hold on.
Until recently, the World
War II steel-ribbed structure had been in use by the National Park Service as
an auxiliary ranger station. McGarrett was handcuffed to an 8x8 metal beam that
stood free in the middle of the office and pierced the ceiling at its apogee.
He was able to surreptitiously lean into the pole and reach his head to
extricate the gag that had become horrifically uncomfortable. Williams stirred as he was carried into the
building dumped unceremoniously in an oversized, leather desk ch
McGarrett had the sense that
the skeleton man liked to have an audience while he worked, possibly another
reason he was alive. The man’s contempt for Brinks’ physician told the
detective that he was probably a doctor himself. More evidence to this effect
presented itself as the man pulled out a standard, black leather medical bag
and began filling a syringe.
“Doctor Bellagio’s
protocol was the foundation, but my work elevated the practice to a truly
functional tool.” The man’s ego shown through in his words
and cocky posture as he spoke. “I only hope that too many cooks haven’t
spoiled the broth in this case.”
McGarrett was more
interested in the fact that the doctor was preparing a hypodermic. “I thought
you said that he was already overdosed.” His voice was hoarse, but he had the
idea that the man was so confident that he would be willing to share the
answers to any number of questions, if the proper homage was paid to his
genius.
Not distressed that his
prisoner was able to speak, he responded as he worked. “He is, but unfortunately,
I don’t have the time to allow him to metabolize what’s already in his system.
I’m a busy man, Steve. So, I’m going to have to use a slightly different
preparation – one which will temporarily work against what’s already there.”
“Why do have to give him
anything else? He told you he’d cooperate!”
The doctor stopped
momentarily and looked with amusement at the detective. “Oh, and I’m certain
that he would NEVER lie to me – but just in case, I’ll validate his story while
he’s under my spell.”
McGarrett knew that he and
his friend were under a certain sentence of death. As soon as Dan revealed that
he’d not yet shared anything that would incriminate anybody, they would be
killed. Whether Williams knew anything or not at this point, it didn’t really
matter. They’d witnessed two murders.
“Before you die, you’ll have
the privilege of watching a master at work.” The doctor vainly proclaimed
before he addressed the only thug in the room – the murderous ghost, McGarrett
thought. “I’ll need silence while I work, so take care of him,” he threw his
head in the cop’s direction as he continued. “And then wait outside with your
compatriots.”
The muscular young man
nodded and pulled a role of hemp twine from nowhere, and further secured
McGarrett’s cuffed hands below chest level on the beam. He then quickly
re-gagged the detective. With a threatening glance at the detective, the
bruiser marched out of the office and closed the door.
The doctor re-positioned the
unresisting Dan and injected him with what he’d just prepared. Almost as an
afterthought, the man grabbed the pair of handcuffs on the nearby table and
secured Dan’s already-bloody left wrist to the arm
rest.
Steve searched his friend’s
expression for signs that he understood what was happening, but there was no
outward indication that he’d heard anything that
alarmed him. His eyes closed probably, McGarrett realized, a result of yet
another drug being introduced into his bloodstream.
With another glance back at
his sickened audience, the doctor placed the heel of his hand on Williams’
forehead and said, “This is called contact hypnosis.” The doctor turned his
attention back to his subject and spoke again. “Danny, it’s time to take a
trip. Feel my hand on your head. It’s growing warmer and warmer. Can you feel
it?”
Dan groaned and frowned, but
did not answer or open his eyes.
“Danny, my
hand. Can you feel it?”
“Yes,” came
the slow, soft response.
No, Danno! Don’t let him take you where you don’t
want to go!
The only noise the
frustrated McGarrett could make was to slightly rattle the metal cuffs against
the beam, but the noise did not carry far enough to disturb the scene in the
corner of the room.
“Good. Your heart is beating
too fast. You must slow it down. Do that now.” The doctor’s authoritative voice
was compelling, and McGarrett was amazed at what he was requesting of his
friend. With the hand not on Dan’s forehead, he reached over and touched the
detective’s neck to find his carotid pulse. After about thirty seconds, the man
pulled both his hands away, and sat on a stool a couple feet in front of Dan. “Very good. It’s time to take a trip. Open your eyes and
look at me.”
Very slowly, Dan lifted his
head from his chest and opened his fogged-over blue eyes.
“The signal is Romeo Foxtrot
two-niner-five-eight-two,” The doctor intoned firmly.
Dan’s expression was not
completely blank, as McGarrett had remembered from before. Today, remembrance
and a little concern seemed present, but he responded. “Romeo
Foxtrot two-niner-five-eight-two—Romeo Foxtrot one-niner-five-two-eight. Supply the response.”
The doctor nodded and
smiled. “The response is Romeo Foxtrot two-niner-four-niner-one.”
The young man’s blank
expression changed nominally at first, and then he looked slowly around the
room. His eyes rested for a moment on McGarrett, standing ten feet away secured
to the metal beam. There was no shock at the sight – just a neutral awareness.
His attention turned to the skeleton man.
“Doctor Raintree.”
That was all Dan announced softly in a cool, clinical tone.
The man acknowledged his
name with a command. “I have questions that you will answer.”
Dan did not react one way or the other, but seemed to be attentive to
the conversation, and Raintree pressed on. “Has anybody since your release from
the Arc attempted activation to change your instructions?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Carter Brinks, with Colonel
Devine, and Jonathan Kaye, with Doctor Bellagio.”
“I know that Doctor Devine
was not successful, but what did you reveal to Doctor Bellagio?”
“Only what Williams
remembered.”
McGarrett was instantly
struck with the detached, third person reference that Dan made to himself.
“Was Doctor Bellagio
successful in removing the mission keys?” The doctor asked, not phased by his subject’s demeanor.
“Yes.”
“But Williams
did not share the Romeo Foxtrot information?”
“No.”
Danno! No! McGarrett felt ready to burst in
aggravation at his muted condition.
“Why didn’t he reveal the Romeo
Foxtrot information?”
“Williams was to be
debriefed on Friday.”
“Does Williams know the
mission information?”
“Yes.”
“Does Williams also remember
the operations information?”
On this question, McGarrett
thought he noticed a flicker of uncertainty before the answer came. Also
interesting to the detective was the fact that his friend, who had until that
point, maintained continuous eye contact with the doctor, looked slightly to
one side.
Don’t say yes, Danno!
“He can know it, if he
wants.”
Raintree leaned back in the
chair, puzzled and obviously dismayed at the response, but recovered quickly.
“You say he can know the information. He does not know it now?”
“No.”
“Why does he NOT know the
information?” The doctor was perplexed and a little annoyed.
A definite
hesitation this time. “Williams
is afraid.”
“Ahhh.” The
light bulb came on for Raintree. “The root of all of
Williams’ problems from the beginning. Well, Williams need fear no
longer. Romeo Foxtrot has no more missions.”
“Correction – Romeo Foxtrot
has one more mission.” Dan cocked his head slightly as he slowly looked up
again to find the eyes of his interrogator.
The response completely
surprised the doctor, who started at Dan’s statement.
As far as McGarrett was
concerned, this was yet another case of the psychiatric establishment being
inadequately able to predict the thoughts and actions of the human mind. It
gave him some small measure of pleasure to see the over-confident doctor taken
down a peg.
“You have no mission!”
Raintree spoke more forcefully.
“I have a mission.” Dan
responded never breaking eye contact with the doctor, who was not pleased.
There seemed to be an order of magnitude greater clarity in Williams’ eyes.
“Exactly WHAT is your
mission?” Raintree folded his arms.
“I am going to kill you.” At
Williams’s even-toned response, Raintree almost slipped off of his stool, but
managed to recover.
A smug, superior expression
fixed on the doctor’s face. “You’re going to be hard put to do that shackled to
that chair.”
The detective looked down at
his left hand, and without any hesitation, turned his hand on its side. With
his right hand balled into a fist, he gave a single, hard pop to the exposed
side of his left thumb. The detective didn’t flinch as the bone in his hand
broke, nor as he pushed the bone out of place, closer into the palm of his
hand. The end result was a narrowing of his hand, enabling him to slip free of
the handcuff.
Not generally one to have a
weak stomach, McGarrett felt a little queasy as he observed, torn between
horror and cheering, as he watched Dan rise, apparently devoid of any emotional
or physical reaction to what he just done to himself.
Raintree’s reaction was
however one of blatant shock. He jumped up from his perch and began backing
away. The man tried to take the offensive by awakening his subject-turned-aggressor.
“You will not kill me. At my
signal—”
He stopped talking as he saw
that Williams was disregarding the commands and moving towards him. More slight in build and at least four inches shorter, the
bedraggled detective did not look the part of an assassin by any stretch of the
imagination, but Raintree was aware that the man had at his fingertips this
very moment the know-how to kill efficiently and quickly. Loathe to get into a
physical struggle with the young man, he backed away quickly trying to scan the
room to find the gun he knew he’d carelessly laid down somewhere.
“Romeo
Foxtrot! The signal is Romeo
Foxtrot zero-zero-three-zero-five-niner! You have the
key – you know what to do!” Raintree barked viciously.
Dan paused momentarily, absorbing
the meaning of the secret signal, but some internal force now drove him to
continue closing on the uneasy physician. “I don’t need a key. I won’t let you
hurt Steve.”
McGarrett was too absorbed
in the life-and-death scene unfolding before him to muse on the statement, but
realized that it was his safety that had driven his second-in-command to break
his own hand to defend him. Raintree had sealed his
own fate when he had threatened Dan with Steve’s tortured death earlier.
“My three men are just outside.
You cannot escape!”
Raintree stalled as he moved
to stand behind McGarrett, who struggled to grasp his detective’s mental
status. Was Danno really under the influence? How could he not be? He wasn’t
sure what it all meant as he struggled to divine Danno’s condition. Was he
capable of killing his aggressor? He prayed that Danno wasn’t actually going to
murder the fiend, no matter how much he deserved to die.
Of course, there would be no
way that Raintree’s death would not be construed as self-defense. After all,
the doctor had already murdered at least two people that day, and announced his
intention to kill again. Steve was more concerned with Williams’ own reaction
to such an act. He was certain that his colleague had never killed anyone, at
least not anyone in a non-combat situation. The young man’s scruples, McGarrett
knew, were a harsh metric against which Dan measured his own behavior, and
certainly killing a suspect, even a vicious, murderer like Raintree would
probably have emotional repercussions for Williams.
“It is not my intention to
escape. It is my intention to break your neck.” The young man’s words and
steely gaze left no doubt in the mind of the physician that he meant to do just
that.
Raintree turned suddenly and
rocketed for the door. Williams almost instantly tracked with his target’s
movements and chased him to the door. Raintree managed to make it out the door
and close it before Dan got there.
Another twist unfolded
immediately before McGarrett. He expected his second-in-command to chase the
fleeing doctor out the door. Instead, he spun quickly as soon as the door
closed, grabbed a nearby ch
He couldn’t help but squeeze
Dan’s shoulder at the brilliant ploy that caused Raintree to evacuate the room
so quickly. He was uncertain whether to be relieved or concerned that his
friend did not react to the touch. Of course, the pair were
still trapped by four murderous thugs.
“What now?” McGarrett said
under his breath not expecting an answer, but he got one.
Dan’s reply was soft and
calm. “Hide-and-seek.”
He moved quickly to the only
other door in the room, which led to the room that comprised the other half of
the hut. Steve followed suit, stopping momentarily to collect Raintree’s
misplaced .44 which he noticed sticking out of the medical bag on the floor.
They closed the door behind them, and McGarrett quickly shoved another chair
under the door knob. As he caught up to Dan at the door at the far end of the
room, the sound of the metal door buckling in the other room could be heard.
The pair looked at each other, and Steve pushed the door to the outside open.
He glanced furtively
outside, knowing they were seconds away from a confrontation with armed gunmen,
and almost immediately, one of the heavies rushed at him, firing his weapon.
McGarrett shoved Dan back behind the door and opened fire. The man’s momentum
carried him into the detective, but he was hit, and so slid to the floor
leaving a trail of red down McGarrett’s shirt and pants.
After a momentary inspection
of the dead man at his feet, Steve looked over at his second-in-command, who
was recovering from the hard push on the other side of the doorway, and
breathed, “Hide-and-seek, huh?”
Dan didn’t speak, but
McGarrett thought / hoped he saw a flicker of a smile crossed his face.
*****
It took Raintree a full
minute to round up his security squad as the three men had strolled off to
smoke and enjoy the tropical air. Once back at the blocked entrance to the hut,
the ghost man circled around to the back of the hut. It didn’t take the other
three men thirty seconds to break down the door and re-take the area. Now
infuriated that he’d been threatened and tricked by his prisoners, the doctor
scanned the area quickly, but heard shots ring out from the back room.
Raintree kicked a chair out
of the way in his haste to get to the other door, but he allowed the Dracula
thug to try the door. It was blocked, so two of the men put their shoulders to
the door and pushed until the blockage moved. Raintree plunged past. It was
immediately obvious that the two detectives were not in the room, with the door
to the outside swinging in the breeze, and the body of the ghost man prone in
the doorway.
“Damn it!” Raintree shouted
as he ran headlong towards the open door. The two men followed him until the
doctor threw the command back at one of them. “Turk, make sure the car is
secure!”
The thug at the back of the
pack stopped suddenly at the command and started to trot back in the other
direction. Before he could turn completely around, he was smacked square in the
face with the handle of the axe that Dan was wielding.
He fell backward and hit the raised floor hard, instantly unconscious. The
other two spun to see Williams diving for the downed man’s weapon as McGarrett,
broken handcuffs still attached to his wrists, drew up Raintree’s own revolver
on him and his last standing monster. The two detectives had doubled back,
re-entered the hut, and come up behind their former captors.
“Hold it right there!”
McGarrett shouted, energized with the realization that the good guys now had a
fighting chance. The detective continued as he sensed the monster having a
quick internal debate about the best course of action. “If you so much as
twitch, it’ll be the last thing you do.” Steve threw a lightening fast glance
at Dan, who was crouching next to the horizontal man on the floor. He had
collected the weapon that had killed Brinks, but held it pointed at the floor.
Raintree shook with rage,
but he didn’t move. The thug dove suddenly for the floor as he aimed his gun to
fire. McGarrett, prepared for the attempt, reacted almost instantly and fired
the gun into the moving target before he or Dan could come into the man’s line
of fire. The man cried out in pain as his body slammed into the floor. With the
diversion on the part of his henchman, Raintree ducked out the door.
Dan slowly
stood, the gun hanging in his right hand, but didn’t make any further move as
Raintree disappeared from view. Steve rushed for the doorway, certain the doctor was racing for the car, but before he
could get all the way out the door, the hand of the ghost man grabbed his
ankle, and he fell into the outdoors. From his new position on the ground,
McGarrett rolled to take aim again, but it was too late – the man had managed
to grab his fallen associate’s gun which had practically dropped into his hand.
It seemed to happen in slow
motion. The detective saw the gunman taking aim at him, and McGarrett flinched
as the report of a gunshot rang in his ears. He looked
down at his chest, and when he saw no sign of injury, he looked back up at his
attacker in time to see the man dropping back to the floor. His line of sight
now clear to Dan, he saw Williams, vacant-eyed, still aiming the weapon he’d
just fired. His expression remained a mask as he let the gun drop to his side.
The sound of a car’s tires
kicking up gravel snapped the head of Five-0 back to thoughts of the fugitive.
McGarrett was, to some degree, relieved that the fiend had managed to escape.
Danno needed his full attention and he didn’t need the distraction of dealing
with the cunning Raintree until he could get help.
He staggered to his feet and
stepped over the bodies littering the path back to Williams. Steve approached
him and gently took the revolver from his hand. Dan relinquished the weapon,
and numbly looked up at his boss. McGarrett took him by the arm and guided him
back into the room where they’d been detained. He sat his protégé down in the
first ch
“You feel up to a walk?”
Steve gave an encouraging smile as he asked the question. He could leave the
young man here to rest, but something in his gut made him feel very
uncomfortable leaving Dan alone in this state.
It took Dan a few moments to
mentally return to the present. He knew Steve had spoken to him, but he
couldn’t remember what he’d said.
As soon as Dan made eye
contact with him, Steve clarified, “We need to walk down to the main road.”
Dan swallowed and nodded. He
responded softly. “Where are we?”
“
“Little dizzy,” Dan mumbled,
keeping his words at a premium.
“Do you need to rest?”
Dan ignored the question,
and typical to him, had a different concern. “Are you okay, Steve?” He took in his boss’s condition as best he
could through his still-dilated, blurry vision.
Steve affectionately
squeezed the back of Dan’s neck. “I’m fine, my friend. It’s you I’m worried
about.”
“I can make it,” Dan said
without conviction.
McGarrett nodded and, with a
supportive hand on his detective’s arm, the pair walked slowly down the hill
towards the main road.
*****
A trip that would’ve
normally taken less than twenty minutes, took almost forty five. McGarrett
guided the unsteady Williams down the road with the care of a man carrying a
box of nitro glycerin. At one point, Dan’s head drooped onto Steve’s shoulder
and they had to stop for a few minutes while Dan regrouped.
Fortuitously, an HPD cruiser
was passing when the pair made it to the main road, and so McGarrett was able
to direct the patrolman to take them to the NIC, where Doctor Bellagio was
waiting. The younger detective slept in the back of the car the entire way. On
the drive, in addition to initiating the securing of the crime scenes and
learning from the HPD sergeant that all available personnel had been called out
to aid in the search for the missing Five-0 detectives, Steve put out an APB on
the man he knew only as Doctor Raintree. He doubted that the man would be found
before he escaped the islands, but knew there was no way he could hide
indefinitely. Obviously, the man was living under the guise of respectability
somewhere, and McGarrett vowed to himself that he would find him and do his
part to bring him to justice.
*****
Dusty rays of sun shown
through the bars of the open window as Dan Williams stirred for the first time
in many hours. He swallowed and grimaced before he opened his eyes. The
unfamiliar room looked and smelled of a hospital, and he had an IV running into
his right hand. His right wrist was wrapped in a bandage of some sort, and even
more strange was the fact that his left hand was snug
in a cast. He panned the room until his eyes rested on the figure that was
leaning on the bedside. It took only a moment for him to focus, and he smiled.
Dan’s visitor spoke first.
“It’s about time you woke up.”
“Steve.” Dan said softly. It
felt good to awaken and find his boss watching over him. For some reason, he
had a sense that he’d been asleep for days, maybe even weeks.
“How are you feeling?”
McGarrett asked as he gently
grabbed the young man’s arm. It had been nearly twenty- four hours since their
rescue and subsequent transport to the
Dan took a few moments to
assess himself before he answered. “Okay, I think. A little groggy. Where are we?” Then he frowned and looked
at the cast on his hand. “How did I hurt my hand?”
Steve had been prepared by
Doctor Bellagio for the probability that Williams would not remember much from
his ordeal as a result of the drugs, but it was still mildly disturbing that
his friend did not instantly recall the harrowing incident. He tried to put
that aside as he responded. “We’re at
“Escape?” Dan searched his memory to find the mental hook that
would bring the past hours back to him.
Steve did not respond
immediately. He wanted to give the detective time to find what memories he
could on his own. He could tell Williams was struggling to come up with the
pieces to this puzzle. Impatient to help his friend, he supplied the beginning
of the story.
“Carter Brinks abducted you
right out of your car, we think.”
“Carter Brinks…abducted…”
Dan closed his eyes as he parroted a few of Steve’s words. After several
moments of contemplation, the young man inhaled sharply and looked up at
McGarrett. “Brinks! He – somebody called the office
with a message from you.” He stopped and cocked his head as he corrected
himself. “But it wasn’t from you.”
Steve let a sad smile slip
onto his face. “No, it wasn’t.” He could tell by his friend’s expression that
recollections were filling his thoughts.
“I don’t think I told him
what he wanted to know.” It was all so hazy. He remembered being strapped to a
table, and he remembered Brinks angrily backhanding him and flicking cigarette
ashes onto him – somebody calling him Romeo Foxtrot -- you will cooperate, Williams -- up the ante in
this deal – the sinister, skeleton face hovering over him.
“Steve!” Panic filled Dan’s
being as he tried to sit up. Steve gently, but persistently, kept the detective
from rising more than six inches from his reclined position. “You were there!
He was going to—” The young man flinched violently. “Gunshots!
He killed someone! The blood! Don’t hurt him!” Dan stared at the foot of the
bed as he replayed the sketchy scenes
“Danno, it’s okay. We’re
okay now.”
McGarrett’s tone was firm to
capture his friend’s attention, but he himself remembered all too well the
terrifying episode when Brinks and his doctor were brutally gunned down. To
remember the incident from a drugged haze would throw confusion into the mix of
macabre.
The lock on the door
clicked. Moments later Doctor Bellagio and Jonathan Kaye stepped into the room.
An armed guard pulled the door closed behind the pair. McGarrett glanced in
their direction with a slight frown. He’d hoped for some privacy with Dan
before they had an audience. Realizing that they had entered at a delicate
moment, the pair discretely stepped back against the wall to observe.
Dan did not notice his new
visitors as Steve’s body prevented him from seeing the door. The reassuring
words from his trusted mentor helped to calm the shock and horror welling up in
his gut as the checkerboard of images leaped from somewhere in the recesses of
his mind. He stopped pressing against McGarrett’s hands and let himself drop
back onto the bed, but he continued speaking.
“Who? It was—it was Brinks! He killed Brinks!”
Steve nodded. “Yes, he
killed Brinks.”
“The skeleton man killed
Brinks…who…who was it? What did he want?” His voice shrank slightly as he began
searching his memory again. The little
assassin who couldn’t – he dies a most horrible and slow death – watching a
master at work…As some measure of clarity returned, Dan gasped. “Doctor
Raintree! He was going to kill you!” His voice started in a whisper but came to
a crescendo as the pieces came together. The patient had begun to rise from the
bed again, but his boss pressed him gently back.
“But he didn’t, did he?” McGarrett’s tone was forceful and confident.
Dan studied the man for
several seconds, trying to get the panicky sensation under control, before he
answered a little more calmly. “No…no, he didn’t.” He looked away slowly to
stare at the bars on window. “Raintree,” he said dejectedly.
McGarrett glanced back as he
heard the approaching footsteps of Bellagio and Kaye. The doctor gave McGarrett
a reassuring nod as he moved around to the other side of the bed right into the
patient’s line of sight. Dan changed his focus slowly to look up at the man.
“You remember Raintree?”
Bellagio asked softly.
Dan nodded slightly but his
expression did not change.
“Was he the one that
conditioned you for the Arc?”
Another slight
nod came from Williams, and after ten seconds of thick silence in the room, he
closed his eyes. McGarrett looked up from the patient to the physician to gauge
whether he should be concerned.
Bellagio frowned
slightly, but maintained an even tone. “Do you remember that you were a
keystone operative for the Arc?”
Dan looked
troubled, but did not respond. He seemed to be concentrating on a bad memory.
McGarrett could sense his friend’s increased anxiety, and apparently so could
Bellagio as he addressed Williams.
“Danny, it’s okay to tell what you know.”
Dan’s took in
several slow, deep breaths, before his eyes popped open. The three men standing
around the bed started at the sudden change in the patient. His expression quickly
moved from one of shock to horror.
“Danno –
whatever it is, we’ll get through it together.” Steve had to make sure his
friend knew he was here for him.
Tears began to
spill from Dan’s eyes. He squeezed them shut tightly. “I- I need to throw up.” He
moved to sit as Bellagio and McGarrett assisted him. He came out of the bed on
the doctor’s side and so it was the physician that maintained a steady hold on
Williams all the way to the small bathroom ten feet away. Dan pushed the door closed
behind him with an almost violent intensity.
Bellagio and
McGarrett moved to stand just outside the door as Williams wretched – there was
nothing to bring up as he hadn’t eaten since early the previous morning. Kaye,
a little more reluctant to become involved in what seemed to him to be personal
medical issues, hung back several feet. After a few minutes of listening
through the door, one noise subsided, but another one seemed to be growing.
The detective
leaned his head on the door. “Danno?” He strained his
ears until the noise grew loud enough to be recognized as sobs. His friend was
crying inconsolably. “Danno, it’s going to be okay.”
“No, it won’t!”
The sound of Dan’s tormented voice boomed through the door. “It’s too late! Oh
my God! It’s too late!” More sobs echoed from the stark bathroom.
“Danno, it’s not
too late! What happened is over – it wasn’t your fault!” McGarrett could feel
his own eyes burning at the sound of Williams anguish. “You were a victim!”
“A
victim?” He screamed
through the door. More sobs followed before he continued. “A victim like
President Kennedy was a victim? ”
McGarrett felt
as if he’d been standing on a precipice preparing to
fall for the past few minutes – it suddenly felt as if he been shoved hard over
the edge. His heart seemed to skip a beat as several isolated tidbits of
information came crashing into focus as a single picture.
They wanted to send me to
His young friend
had been groomed as the one who would assassinate the now late President
Kennedy – OR more likely (since they eventually figured out that their chosen
assassin would not assassinate) – the one who would be accused and convicted! There
would have been evidence that Williams was a communist sympathizer – pictures
of him in
Hating to
intrude, but not satisfied with just standing outside the door, Steve McGarrett
made a decision – not as a cop or a spook – but as a friend. He gently opened
the door, and was met with only weak resistance as Williams pushed back
half-heartedly. “Go away, Steve! How can you even stand to look at me?”
Dan’s head
rested on his cast left arm, which was draped across the toilet seat. The head
of Five-0 kneeled next to his friend and placed his hand on the back of his
neck. His tone was typically loud and firm. “Danno, you didn’t know – you
couldn’t have stopped it – they would’ve killed you! They tried their damndest to set you up as their patsy, but they couldn’t!”
Dan slowly looked up into his boss’s face — he desperately needed to believe
and it showed in his tear-streaked face.
Steve’s voice
was confident as he added softly, “You were just too good for them.”
Williams’ lower
lip quivered and more tears spilled down his cheeks, but this time, they were
tears of gratitude for the tremendous gift of unwavering support from Steve
McGarrett. Dan nodded slightly and gave his boss a very welcome but brief and
tentative smile. McGarrett helped Dan slowly come to his feet and held his arm
until Williams was settled back in the bed.
“Well, there it is!”
Jonathan spoke for the first time through clenched teeth. “A
witness that links the Arc to the assassination of JFK.” Neither
McGarrett nor Bellagio reacted to the statement as
they were concentrating on the condition of Kaye’s witness
Doctor Bellagio handed his patient a glass of orange juice, which
Dan eyed suspiciously.
“It’s one
hundred percent pure orange juice – with no additives!” The doctor smiled
encouragingly. Williams glanced over at McGarrett for reassurance before he
took a sip. “Danny, I want you to tell
Steve these answers. Did Doctor Raintree use drugs and hypnosis to try to force
you to do things that you knew were illegal?”
The silence in the room
seemed deafening to Dan as he looked up into Steve’s eyes. The strength was
there for him and he responded, albeit shakily. “Yes… Raintree tried, and when
I wouldn’t…he wouldn’t let me sleep or eat …he kept telling me that I was an
ungrateful, little nothing…nobody cared whether I lived or died…” Dan’s
recollection of the pain was mirrored in Steve’s eyes as the young man swallowed
and pressed on. “I—uh…I still wouldn’t do it, and I thought he might kill me,
but after a week maybe, he made me forget what he’d done to me, and then he
just let me go. Lieutenant Colonel
Hazleton worked with me on my cover story for a week before I was turned over
to the Coast Guard.”
It was Kaye’s turn to gasp.
“Warren Hazleton?”
Dan nodded and looked down
at the cast on his arm.
Kaye looked at Steve to
explain. “He’s now the assistant to the Director of the CIA. That he had
connections to the Arc has some very serious implications.” The man put his
hands over his eyes for a few moments, absorbing the news before he looked back
at Williams. “Danny, we need to know sooner rather than later anything else you
can tell us about this.”
Dan nodded again, but
continued studying his cast.
Bellagio spoke again. “Danny
are you prepared to provide a recorded statement?”
Another slow, unenthusiastic
nod came from Williams as he asked the question that burned in his mind. “Did –
did Raintree escape?” He looked up once again into the eyes of his boss,
needing to gauge the man’s reaction to his query.
Well-schooled in the art of
non-reaction, McGarrett offered his answer as neutrally as he could muster. “He
hasn’t been captured yet, but he will be eventually. He’s apparently a
world-renowned psychiatrist.”
“He runs the Raintree Clinic
for Psychiatric Studies in
“I’m locked in a psych
ward?” Dan asked feeling the need to change the subject.
“Only for
your own protection.” McGarrett’s
supplied.
“I bet that’s what they tell
all the guests here.”
Steve chuckled. “Yeah,
Danno, I bet you’re right.” It was good to see some of Dan’s sense of humor
returning after such a traumatic couple of days.
Guiding the conversation
back to the issue at hand, the doctor planned. “We can conduct the debriefing
right here after we get our witness something to eat.”
“And some cigarettes,” Dan
added.
“You need to quit smoking.”
Steve let the admonishment
slip out about the habit he hated. He hadn’t made too many waves about it
because it wasn’t something that affected his job performance, but the more
time he spent with Williams the more he found the vice disturbing.
Dan gave his boss a
pleading-no-lectures-now look. He didn’t feel up to arguing about something he
viewed as a personal comfort at that moment.
McGarrett recognized the
expression and relented. “Okay, okay, not today maybe.” But soon, he decided.
*****
“Hey, open this door! Why am
I still locked in?” Dan pounded and called through the door to the guard he
knew was on the other side.
“That’s how the doors work
in this wing, sir,” came the muffled reply. “You
should be sleeping. It’s
“Open the door, man. I’m not
a patient—well, I’m not a mental patient.” Dan
implored. At least I don’t think I am....
“Sir, if I open this door,
then I will have to wake Mr. McGarrett in the next room, and quite frankly,
sir, he dropped on that bed in there only a couple hours ago. Do you really
want me to wake him up?”
Dan was silent for a few
seconds, touched that his boss had not left him locked up in the psychiatric
ward without any recourse. He knew Steve would have been carrying an enormous
workload at the office in his absence. He envisioned that the detective worked
late and then came here to sleep, knowing that he might awaken sometime during
the night after the final exhausting question-and-answer session the previous
evening. Williams had reluctantly agreed to be sequestered in the secure
facility truly for his own protection until he had been completely debriefed.
Now, knowing that the debriefing was complete, and that he was free to leave as
soon as he could be signed out by somebody, he awakened very early and felt,
well – caged.
“No…no, don’t wake him,”
Williams responded slowly.
Then he leaned on the wall
next to the door. He slid to the floor and sat there. He couldn’t bring himself
to awaken Steve just because he himself felt a world better with five hours of
natural, non-drug-induced rest. As super human as the man sometimes seemed, Dan
knew all too well that his mentor would drive himself until he literally
dropped.
It had been a difficult
couple of days for Williams as the marathon recording sessions captured almost
thirty two hours of statement from the detective, who was emotionally drained
after responding to hundreds of questions and recounting numerous incidents,
most of which he did not remember prior to the hypnosis session with Bellagio.
Dan paced and smoked for awhile as he spoke. Other times he sat at the table
where the tape recorder was set up, and for awhile, he sat on the bed to speak.
Facts which were meaningless to the young man offering them were obviously
significant to Jonathan Kaye and
Williams implicated Doctor
Raintree, along with several other individuals known to Kaye, in numerous
illegal activities, but he had almost no memory of the events surrounding his
abduction and imprisonment. It was McGarrett’s testimony that would provide a
record of the evil deeds that had come to pass in those horrifying hours. Kaye
promised that heads would be rolling, possibly out of the public eye, but
rolling nonetheless, for months to come. He said both Williams and McGarrett
would be called to testify in more than one classified tribunal. McGarrett was
insistent that Raintree would be found and tried in a court of law for the
crimes he’d committed on Hawaiian soil, and Kaye knew he would end up
compromising in some capacity in order to make sure both Hawaiian detectives
cooperated with his agenda.
McGarrett was in attendance
for some of Dan’s debriefing sessions, but had an ocean of police duties that
required his attention as well. The backlog of work, with the two top
detectives out of the office, had become voluminous, and there was no way for
Steve to ignore the fires that had sprung up in their absence.
This was just another case
in point in the mind of McGarrett. Since he’d appointed Williams his
second-in-command, he’d been able to attend to previously neglected duties on the
other islands, and be out of the office for a day or two here and there for
other reasons. While things were frequently accomplished in what he thought
were less-than-orthodox, definitely untraditional manners, nothing fell apart. His young
second-in-command always seemed to be able to keep the ship on course. Steve
had even been able to take a spontaneous flight to
Dan tapped on the door again
without getting up. “Hey, friend?” When no answer was
immediately forthcoming, Williams cursed himself for allowing Doctor Bellagio
to talk him into laying down for a few hours to wait
for his boss to return and collect him. Now, he was effectively imprisoned
until McGarrett woke up. He sighed, but then turned his head to the door as a
shuffling sound filtered under the door. “Hey, you got a smoke I could have?”
“You need to quit,” came the
terse response.
Williams turned his
shoulders to the door as he recognized his boss’s voice. He smiled as the door’s lock tumblers clicked and McGarrett stepped into his
room. The man looked weary. Still in his suit pants and white shirt, he’d
abandoned his tie and jacket in favor of a blue cardigan sweater. Stuffed under
his arm, was a nondescript, brown paper bag.
“I don’t know how you can
have a two-week growth of beard when you shave every day,” Dan teased as he
accepted Steve’s outstretched hand to rise from the floor.
“Your two weeks is my two hours,
Danno, what can I say?” McGarrett smiled and studied his friend as he spoke. “You alright?” The young man looked a little gaunt and tired
yet, the remnant of a black eye adding to the image. His right wrist was bandaged and his left
hand was still in the cast, and would remain that way for the next few weeks
he’d been told. Dan could still not remember how he’d done it, but had been
uncharacteristically disinterested in the details of their time as Raintree’s
prisoners.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Did I wake
you?” Dan wrinkled his nose slightly at the thought.
Steve shrugged. “That’s
okay. I didn’t think you’d want to be here any longer than absolutely
necessary. So, I thought I’d just hang around until you woke up, and we could
get out of Dodge together.”
“Thanks, Steve,” Dan smiled
with appreciation. “You look wiped out though. Maybe I’d better drive YOU
home.”
McGarrett, as tired as he
felt, was almost exuberant with relief that Williams seemed more like himself
than he had in days. He nodded and handed Dan the bag. “I’ll drive, but only if
you’ll put on some street clothes.”
*****
Dan rolled down the window
down on his boss’s LTD as the sedan progressed towards his place. The moist,
fragrant air filled his lungs. It felt good to be free. He’d learned, as Steve
promised, that he’d followed the orders of his superiors up to the point where
those order began to cross the line into the unethical. Even under the
influence of hypnotic cocktails, Doctor Raintree had been unable to convince
the young soldier to commit acts that went against his nature.
The story that went out to
the general public before Dan was released from the hospital was that Carter
Brinks, a government agent with some undisclosed personal problems had
kidnapped McGarrett and Williams in an effort to prevent them from being
witnesses in a classified federal case. Many elements in the official tale
which Jonathan Kaye sculpted and had leaked did not make sense, but it didn’t
matter. Kaye knew that the only thing that needed to be in the public eye was
the hint of a reasonable explanation for the kidnappings and murders that had
darkened
“I want you take a few days
off, and I mean it.” Steve threw a glance at his passenger, who seemed relaxed
but a little melancholy.
“I’d rather not.” Dan’s
cheerless tone confirmed what McGarrett suspected. “I just like to get back to
— to normal.”
“You mean to being an overworked, underpaid civil servant instead of an
uncooperative, has-been assassin,” McGarrett offered.
Dan smirked and looked over
at his boss, who kept his eyes on the road. “I’ll remember you said that at
review time.” He looked out the window again and grew serious quickly. He decided
he needed to admit what was bothering him. “The Arc picked me because I was
alone in the world. I was a nobody that could be set up as a patsy for a
heinous crime, or I could vanish forever without so
much as a peep from anybody. I didn’t think about it much at the time – that I
was the last one standing in my family – but I guess it kind of got to me that
Raintree was right – what he said I mean.”
“I disagree, Danno. That may
be what the Arc thought they were getting, but, as far as Kaye can tell, you
are the only Arc keystone to escape with your life. And the reason is because
you had a very highly placed family who was prepared to make a rather large
public fuss about your disappearance.” The older detective reminded his
protégé.
Dan looked down and shook
his head. “Steve, that might be the reason I’m alive,
but in the end, Doug let go pretty quickly. If the Arc HAD murdered me, nothing
would’ve come of it. Aunt Clara would’ve received a letter about a tragic car
accident or something months after I was worm food.”
“Hmm, I think, as usual,
you’re underestimating yourself, and maybe your aunt
too.” McGarrett turned the sedan into his usual fire lane parking spot in from
of Dan’s apartment and put the car into park.
Dan shrugged. “It doesn’t
really matter now, I guess.”
“Times
change, Danno. You had multiple
shifts of HPD personnel out beating the bushes for you after Brinks grabbed
you, and you’re disappearance warranted television coverage and made the front
page of all the newspapers the next day.”
Dan had to smile as he
offered a mildly sarcastic reply. “And that had nothing to do with the fact
that I had you in my corner.”
The pair looked up to lock
gazes as the driver reached over and squeezed his passenger’s shoulder. “And in
your corner, I’ll stay, my friend. Never forget who you are.”
“Who’s that?” Dan teased,
trying to pull back a bit from the emotion he felt right then.
“You are a talented and
honest cop and – and a devoted friend.” McGarrett confided.
With praise like that, there
was no way Dan could leave the car feeling alone in the world.
*****
In a rare move, Steve held
the door open for his second-in-command. Dan acknowledged the unexpected
courtesy with an uncertain glance as he stepped through the Five-0 outer doorway
for the first time since he’d left on that fateful day to meet his boss. Chin,
Kono, and May were all standing together in front of Steve’s door. The smiles
on their faces told him something was up before he could see what that
something was. The detective studied the trio suspiciously as he and his boss
moved in their direction.
“Isn’t anyone gonna say
aloha?” Williams asked loudly, and looked behind him for a moment at a smiling
McGarrett.
By way of answer, the trio
parted and opened the door to their boss’s office. Perplexed, he stepped past
his co-workers and had a clear line of sight to Steve’s desk. Propped and
centered against the front of the big wood desk was a brand new surf board. It
was sky blue, with thin swirls of winter white dancing across the smooth
surface. The expression on the youngest detective’s face revealed his surprise
and pleasure at the sight. He approached almost tentatively, a shy smile
persistent on his face, and ran his hand down the front of the board
admiringly. His beloved long board had been destroyed that night in the parking
garage, and he’d known there would be no telling when he’d be able to afford a
decent replacement. Perfect
It took a full thirty
seconds before the detective remembered the other people in the room. Not one
to let silence sit for too long, Kono spoke. “It’s a new eight-six.”
“Yeah,” the detective
responded as he looked at his friends, all pleased at his reaction.
McGarrett now stood behind
the others with his arms folded. He smiled tolerantly, and Dan knew that his
boss’s wallet had figured heavily in this very extravagant gift.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Dan had not expected to have
one of the new fiberglass boards for a long time. He was compelled to take a
look at the back side of the board before he continued, and something caught
his eye. It was on the side of the white fin – something written in sky blue.
He squatted to get a closer look. Painted and sealed onto fin were the words:
Detective
Dan Williams
“In case you forget who you
are,” Kono offered. “It was Steve’s idea.”
Now, completely choked up,
Dan just shook his head and whispered. “She’s a beauty. Thank you.”
May moved towards him and
wrapped her arms around his neck. “We’re glad to have you back in one piece –
again!”
“I’m not sure this gift
smacks of keeping you that way.” McGarrett supplied with a grin, reveling in
the much-deserved delight he’d just given his detective.
Dan shook each detective’s
hand. Kono yanked him over and gave him a bear hug, and Chin gave him the manly
hair muss as he shook Steve’s hand.
“Steve…” Dan just looked at
his boss. What could he say to a man who’d saved his life and bought him a new
surf board to boot? Their eyes met as he hesitated.
Steve understood his
protégé’s difficulty and shrugged. “I already know, Danno.”
A piece of fiberglass hardly
seemed enough to thank somebody who’d shown him such
incredible loyalty and dedication. The young man had been willing to die for
him, and had saved his life by breaking his own hand.
As for Romeo Foxtrot, he
stood there with the people that did care whether he lived or died, knowing
that his niner niner
mission had come at last, and it had been successful.