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sealieRating: Slash
Word count: ~3,700
Warning: not that I can think of
Advisory: potty mouth; disability; violence! IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling.
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof \o/ YAY
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
“Shit!” The dirt beneath Danny was disintegrating. A monolith of rock was shearing away from the edge -- a gap was separating a handbreadth before Danny’s feet. Danny scuttled backwards, heels kicking out. He wanted to run, but instinct told him to stay low, to spread out his weight. A horrendous, nail-scraping, blackboard-nerve-screeching noise clawed the air. The rock face started to truly detach.
“Danny!”
He was yanked back by the scruff of his neck, and dragged across the ground.
“Geez--” Danny craned his head around.
Steve, one hand wrapped around one of the sturdy poles delineating the edge, the other twisted in the collar of Danny’s flack jacket, was yanking him back. Adrenalin and fear fuelled Steve. Abreast of the pole, moving into a crouching run, he kept pulling, hauling Danny well past the pole line and onto solid, hard rock.
A numbingly loud crack ricocheted through the air. Steve froze, stopping them dead. Before them the shaft of rock shaved clear off the edge of the cliff face with a boom like a canon.
“Holy Mother of G--” Danny shook.
Abruptly, Steve was in Danny’s space, patting him over, feeling his chest, stroking his hair. There was babbling, but Danny wasn’t too sure who was babbling. Large hands cupped Danny’s face, carefully turning him towards Steve’s wide eyed concern.
Danny forced himself back to reality. He scrunched his fingers in his hair. He had just watched Hesse fall to his death off the cliff. He had almost followed Hesse to his watery death. It was emphatically not like television. Hesse was dead.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Steve said, intent. Two-handed, he hauled Danny to his feet. “You are. You’re okay.”
“I got shot!” Danny protested indignantly. “I almost fell off your stupid peninsula. I’m never letting Grace play out here!”
Steve snorted out a laugh, and abruptly, Danny was mashed up against Steve’s chest, his nose smushed in the hollow of Steve’s throat.
“You’ll be fine,” Steve rumbled, “you just caught a glancing shot. I bet it will hardly bruise. And you were miles away from the edge.”
Danny poked Steve’s side with his pointy finger, making him tickle-wriggle away from its probing.
“I am traumatised!” Danny jabbed him again, and Steve backed off a fraction.
A crazy grin threatened to blossom over Steve’s face. There was a thin ribbon of blood trickling through the stubble from his nose, to spread over the structure of his top lip like tributaries in a river delta.
“You are okay,” Steve said firmly. He cupped the back of Danny’s head, and pulled him into a kiss.
Danny’s brain was going like a freight train: shot; kissing; fighting; plummeting; falling; House; terrorists; Kono; Chin and Malia…. The searchlight from the helicopter framed them in stark light and shadows. Kissing on a precipice in moonlight, illuminated by a shaft of a searchlight -- Danny would have killed for a camera.
“Where are you?” Steve rested his forehead against Danny’s.
“What?” Danny licked his lips, tasting blood.
Warm fingers pressed against his throat. Danny could feel his own pulse thrumming against the cool fingertips.
“Okay, Babe,” Steve said uncharacteristically, “you’re a little shocky. It’s allowed.”
“What?”
Steve slid a large hand under Danny’s heavy vest and pressed his abdomen.
“Ow,” Danny protested. It hadn’t really hurt.
“No rigidity,” Steve said, sounding ridiculously professional. “Come on, back to the House.”
Danny let Steve tow him, hand in hand, back along the paths.
~*~
The House was in an uproar. Every single external light was on, illuminating a scene of chaos. Fire engines, patrol cars, ambulances, and black sedans were stopped left and right. Some vehicles were on the gravel drive, others on the grass. Chin had only just started to reclaim the gardens after the fire engines had torn up the area fighting the Hall fire. There was a stream of fire fighters heading north towards the plume of the burning helicopter, behind the workshops, deep in the woods.
“Sir!” Simons marched over.
“Lieutenant, update.” Steve said, as he angled them over to one of the ambulances.
“Anton Hesse and Jovan Eteinne have been taken to the Honolulu Medical Centre under guard. A third unknown is dead. Paul Leto is in custody, he’s being taken to the Base. Victor Hesse hasn’t been found.”
“We need search and rescue to retrieve his body from Wailele Bay,” Steve said. “The bay north of the peninsula.”
“Retrieve?”
“He fell, very far, after I shot him in the chest,” Steve rapped. “I don’t care how many lives he has, that fall isn’t survivable.”
Smug wasn’t the word that Danny would have used to describe Steve’s expression. Satisfied wasn’t correct either. Nor was content. Perhaps a combination of the three with a soupçon of relief? Maybe not?
“This is Danny Williams,” Steve was saying. “He took a round to his chest. No rigidity, but he’s a little shocky.”
“What?” Danny protested, as he was plopped down on the tailgate of an ambulance and suddenly had two unknown paramedics in his face.
“Just let them check you out, Danny.” Steve made a rapid scan of the immediate area. “Simons, with me.”
Tangled with the bulletproof vest that the paramedics were removing, Danny was momentarily captured. A young man was in his personal space, talking soothingly, as his female companion lifted up Danny’s t-shirt.
“That’s an old scar.” She pressed his abdomen with a hand protected by a glove that tangled tackily with his abundant body hair.
“Hernia decades ago. It caught my intestine. I needed emergency surgery. I was seventeen.” Hardly anyone commented on it. Steve had never even mentioned it, or possibly even realised that it was a scar. Danny barely thought about it.
“You got shot?” the paramedic asked.
Danny winced as she pressed a sensitive spot skirting the edge of his ribs, higher and to the left of the bisecting scar.
“You’re going to have a great bruise, but your ribs are intact. Did you fall? Hit your head?”
“No, I didn’t hit my head.” Danny shook it.
“Let’s just get your blood pressure; you’re looking a little flushed.”
“Sunburn,” Danny explained, moving his arm away from the kid, who was already unfurling a blood pressure cuff.
“We just want to rule out internal bleeding,” the female paramedic said. “I think that you were very lucky that you were wearing the vest.”
“You have no idea.” Danny submitted to their ministrations, guessing that it was the quickest way out of the ambulance.
~*~
Escape came with recommendations to ice the rapidly forming bruise, and take some Tylenol, but not ibuprofen.
The House was in an uproar. There were more people milling around than at their New Year’s Party.
“Danny?” Kono jogged over, skirting around an engineer who was checking the foyer security alarm pad. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. More to the point, are you okay?”
She had a pristine white bandage wrapped around her wrist. She flexed it gingerly.
“Bad punch. My sensi will have more than a few words. I guess. It’s actually different when you’re punching a person for real,” she said ruefully.
“Hesse?” Danny asked.
“Hesse,” Kono confirmed with a grin. “Steve said he fell. He’s dead?”
“It’s easily a straight drop of four hundred-five hundred yards. I don’t think anyone could survive that. I’ll be happier when they find his body, though.” Danny sniffed. “Chin and Malia? Mary? Have you let her out of the catacombs yet?”
“Yeah.” Kono wrinkled her nose.
“She’s not happy with you?” Danny diagnosed.
“Mmmmm, that’s a no,” Kono jigged a little from foot to foot. The twist of her shoulders said she was unrepentant.
“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” Danny said astutely.
“Better safe than sorry.” Kono shrugged. “You know.”
‘You know’ held a multitude of reasons, top of which was Kono apparently didn’t trust Mary, which surprised Danny because Kono was the trusting sort. Danny didn’t trust Mary, but he was a suspicious New Jersey native. Mary had met with Jenna Kaye. Mary had kept the handbag secret. She, by her own words, was not a member of the co-operative, nor did she want to be, and it wasn’t a case of protesting too much.
“Mmmm,” Danny could only echo. “Chin? Malia?”
“Making tea.” Kono pointed at the kitchen.
“Have you seen Steve?”
“Danny, you all right?” Steve strode out of the Seolh office with a Barnabas Simons dedicated shadow on his heels.
“Bruised,” Danny started to expand on the situation, but stopped when Joe White appeared behind them with another tall uniformed officer. He was an older African America man -- grey touched the hair at his temples -- and he was a senior officer based on the multiple stripes on his cuffs. There was an air of confidence around him that Danny wanted to photograph.
“Commander Archer. Mr. Danny Williams,” Steve introduced them, politely.
“Oh, yeah, Steve’s mentioned you.” Danny offered the officer his hand. “Boss, right?”
“Mr. Williams. Dr. Hewson speaks well of your photography skills, and that you’ve taken Corporal Oh under your wing.” Archer had a firm dry grip, the kind that you instinctively liked and respected.
“Hey, I have to ask, was Talmai involved in this?” Danny checked them all for a reaction. “Was he working with Paulo as a -- I dunno -- mole for Wo Fat?”
“Talmai?” Archer asked, eyebrow arched.
“Member of the Kapu, worked closely with Paulo, while Blue was on medical leave, so-to-speak,” Steve explained, standing at attention.
“Your personal, family protection detail,” Archer observed, regarding him.
“Sir,” Steve said.
“Hmmm.”
“Kavika is on his way here. Talmai? I’ll check up on him.” Steve pursed his lips.
“He wanted a night off with his girlfriend,” Danny offered. “Maybe Paulo used that as an opportunity when he saw Steve going off to the Navy surveillance van. Are they all right?”
Steve shook his head.
“Hesse thought that you had found what Wo Fat was looking for.” Archer lifted his chin, and flared broad nostrils. “It wasn’t you going out to the surveillance van with Kaye’s smartphone that triggered this activity. They were planning on questioning you before you found the phone. Commander?”
“Yes, sir, but we haven’t found what Wo Fat’s looking for.”
Ah, of course, Steve had been running out to the van when Danny and Chin had looked at the ledger images. Interestingly, Steve wasn’t mentioning the slides.
“I’m tempted to get every single crime scene investigator linked to PACCOM to turn this house upside down. But on seeing this -- what did you call it, White? -- garage sale, I’m not entirely sure that we would know it if we found it. You’re an intelligent man, Commander, what is Wo Fat looking for?”
“It’s personal, sir. Very valuable to him. I’m guessing that it’s portable. Something that my mother could have stolen from his father.”
“Which you’ve told me, Commander.” Archer regarded Steve from his taller height. “I want specifics. I want the item.”
“Yes, sir.” Steve’s hand twitched as if he aborted a salute.
“There’s more than just finding what P-One is looking for. Our ultimate goal is to capture P-One and dismantle his network,” Archer said, seriously. “This is our trap. Commander, find out what Wo Fat is looking for. The woeful lack of security will be addressed. You are under lockdown, Commander.”
“I can stay,” Joe White said.
“No. Lieutenant Simons.” Archer turned to the younger man.
“Sir.” Simons straightened. Starkly, he was a younger, slimmer version of Archer, gauche in the man’s shadow.
“I understand that you sing in your copious spare time.”
“Yes, sir. Tenor. In my copious spare time.” Manfully, Simons did not smile.
“Well, that seems to be appropriate criteria.” Archer glanced at the ramrod straight Steve. “I am sure that you will fit in in Seolh, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Simons nodded.
Huh, new resident.
“White, you’re with me. Commander.” Archer nodded at Steve.
Steve inclined his head, accepting all orders and instructions without argument.
“Yes, sir.” White followed Archer out of the front door, a respectful three paces behind the commander. At the threshold, White cast a fleetingly obscure glance back over his shoulder before following Archer. Danny didn’t know what to make of it, but maybe Steve was adept at understanding cryptic Joe White communications.
“Is he--” Danny jerked his thumb at the empty doorway, “--like the god of Naval Intelligence? He’s a Commander, like you?”
“No, not lieutenant commander, a commander -- higher rank. And he should be a rear admiral.”
“Commander–commander?” Danny checked.
Steve rolled his eyes. Simons impassively regarded them as if on a parade ground.
“Hmmm.” Danny knuckled his brow. “What now?”
“We’ll--” Steve sniffed and scrubbed at his top lip disturbing flecks of dried blood, “--do clean up. We won’t be allowed near Paulo tonight. I gave NCIS Kaye’s phone. That will take time to analyse. This is frustrating.”
“Brah!” There was a kerfuffle outside.
Steve slid a checking glance to Danny.
“That’s Talmai,” Danny explained, “at the door.”
Steve strode down the corridor on long legs. Simons working to step protectively in front of him; he failed.
“Hey, wait for me.” Danny chased after them.
Talmai was on the veranda, hands half-raised, before three Naval officers. The stocky one at the forefront had her hand on her hip by her holstered weapon.
“You guys okay?” Talmai asked. “Man, Paulo said that I could go see my woman. Man, I didn’t know that this would happen. Oh, fuck it. Kavika is so pissed.”
“Stand down,” Steve ordered the officers.
The woman measurably gauged all the players, before stepping aside to allow the conversation to continue.
“Stevie, is everyone okay?” Talmai asked. “Kono, Mary, Toast?”
“We’re fine.” Steve nodded shortly. “Paulo just took an opportunity. It was ill conceived and badly planned….”
“Babe?” Danny asked as Steve segued into silence.
“Talmai, is Kavika on his way?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, brah.” Talmai nodded like one of those model dogs in the back of people’s cars. “He’s like five minutes behind me.”
“Simons, liaise with S&R. I want Hesse’s body found. Talmai, watch for Kavika; I want to know immediately the status of the Kapu watching Mamo. I need to talk with the security engineers and find out where the signal scrambler is and shut it down.” Steve stared straight at Danny. “Danny, can you check on Malia, Chin, Kono, and Mary for me?”
“Yeah, sure,” Danny said. Normally, he liked to rail against orders, but there was a feverish cast to Steve’s eyes that needed to be assuaged by regaining order.
“Right.” Steve visibly drew himself taller. “Go.”
~*~
What felt like a thousand years later, Danny trooped his way up the twisting stairs to Steve’s eyrie, cognizant of his sore tummy.
Malia and Chin were fine -- Malia had handed him a cup of tea with hands that shook when he had found them in the kitchen, but her eyes had been steady. Kono had, after some cajoling, gone to the ER with Chin to get her wrist x-rayed. That had left Danny with Malia and an angry Mary. She had not appreciated being locked in the catacombs one little bit. Luckily, she didn’t seem to have twigged that Kono had locked her down there because she wasn’t trusted.
The narrow staircase smelled strongly of bleach and fresh paint, competing with charring. There was no evidence that a flash grenade had gone off in the contained space, nor that (Danny assumed) Jovan Eteinne had been badly burnt. Danny stayed away from the glistening white walls. The NCIS clean up team had moved obscenely quickly in Danny’s opinion. It was as if they had worked to obliterate any memory of the attack. Danny wasn’t going to forget it any time soon.
The door to Steve’s apartment was missing. And the clean up team hadn’t been able to remove the evidence of shredding bullet holes in the kitchen wall, although the floor had been swept clean.
The bookcase was back in position, and the diamond wells were empty. The fine wood was marred by splintering dints. Books were in strategic piles on the floor alongside the bookcase. No rhyme or reason dictated the multiple Leaning Towers of Pisa, waiting patiently to be put back in position.
The only light was the television, which was still on, sharing infomercials with no one.
It was close to two o’clock in the morning, but Danny didn’t think that Steve was in bed. Sniffing absently, he rubbed at his sunburnt nose.
Where was Steve?
Danny looked in the most obvious place, the museum office.
“Hey.” Sitting at the desk, Steve looked up as Danny stepped into the room. “How’s Kono?”
“Just bruised,” Danny reported, “no breaks.”
“Good,” Steve said tersely.
“Whatcha doing?” Danny drawled on seeing that Steve held a doll. He pointed his thumb at the shelf behind his left shoulder. “Playing with dolls? Your GI Joe is in the box up there.”
The wooden doll wore a long collared tunic, which splayed at the waist. The figure was possibly Chinese -- well, Danny wasn’t too sure of the style. It was the first doll from the suite of slides. The vase was set solidly on the desk at Steve’s elbow. It was bigger than Danny had guessed from the images, easily three foot tall, typically shaped, black with a gold five-clawed dragon curling around the body. A warrior holding a bow cocked an arrow, threatening the dragon.
Danny reached out to touch the gilt.
“Best not,” Steve warned absently.
Belatedly, Danny realised that Steve was wearing white cotton gloves.
“Oh.” Danny clasped his hands firmly behind his back. “Valuable?”
“Mmmm,” Steve said uninformatively. “Fourteen century. Yuan Dynasty. Unusual for the date. It’s been repainted circa the Sixteenth Century, adding the gold highlights so that the dragon erroneously gained five claws. Essentially, they vandalised the vase.”
“Stolen?” Danny hedged.
Steve glanced up from his contemplation of the doll.
“Do you think that your Mom stole this Chinese vase from Wo Yongfu?” Danny clarified.
“No.” Steve shook his head. “I have its provenance. My great-great-grandfather purchased it from a collector in Beijing.”
Danny rolled his eyes.
“What?”
“Great-great-grandad bought it for the museum?” Danny said with a hint of mocking.
“Yes,” Steve said seriously, eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion, evidently getting a hint of the tone. “He was a patron of the arts.”
“Patron of the arts,” Danny echoed sing-song. “Do you not think that these things should be on display instead of stuck in the attic?”
“Well, the vase used to be on that little round table in the foyer. But when me and Mary moved in permanently, Grandmother moved it up here for its own safety.”
Visions of a teenage Mary and Steve careening around the House chasing each other scrolled across Danny’s mind’s eye.
“Did Great-great-grandad buy the doll?”
“Funnily enough, yeah, same time as the vase. But he’s a 17th Century Qing dynasty Manchu bannerman.” Steve held up the doll for Danny’s benefit. Belatedly, Danny realised that the doll was male, short of stature and stocky.
“That’s Chinese?” Danny asked.
Steve hummed and harred. “In so far as much as the Manchu conquered the then Chinese Empire and established the Qing dynasty.”
“Okay? How does that link with the storyline of the slides?” Danny asked, thinking hard. “The link with China is obvious: coins, vase, doll…”
“But--” Carefully, Steve picked up a second doll from a protective layer of tissue paper, “--this one is Sioux, probably Lakota.”
It was another male doll. The long black hair had thrown Danny’s first impression. The beadwork on the tunic was incredibly detailed as were the carefully reconstructed belt and knife, and the strap of a tiny bow case over the warrior’s shoulder. The doll held a stave with a mounted stone.
“China. Native American,” Danny mused. “Have you found the third doll?”
“No. Grandmother might have knitted clothes for it and it’s in with her stuff in the reception rooms.”
“That third doll was white, wasn’t it?” Danny squinted, thinking hard. It was a porcelain baby-girl doll with blonde ringlets and creepy glass eyes.
“I don’t know what story it tells,” Steve said glumly.
“Maybe,” Danny pondered, “the whole sequence isn’t relevant to Wo Fat? The photographs of your dad’s car and that Koji guy were from your mom’s ‘friendly’ investigations into the Yakuza? And then she finished the film off after she stole the ledger? Although taking the set up shots of the beach at your old home was strange.”
“In what way?”
“Did she develop film? I’m just guessing, but taking photos of your home, and then giving them to the CIA to develop seems a little hinky?”
Steve’s thumbnail went to his lips as he digested those thoughts.
“She never developed the film, though, did she,” Steve said around his thumbnail. “I’m guessing things moved fast. Mom was a planner. Even picnics were full on battle plans. Yet, you mentioned that some of those slides you developed were out of focus and shaky. Did dad leaving with Koji in the Mercury Marquis trigger something?”
“Like what?
“We’ve speculated before that while she was assigned to the Noshimuri family, she was working the Chinese Triad angle. I mean, there’s the photographs that you developed from Southern China or North Korea. So something alerted the Chinese Triad Dragon Head that she was not just a housewife. Between taking the Mercury Marquis photo she acquired the ledger. She finished the slide film, maybe taking random shots around the House, and then hid the undeveloped film roll and coins under the floorboards back at our old place.”
“All of those things couldn’t have been laying around in the same place? She didn’t just randomly shoot pictures,” Danny pointed out.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Steve said. “The tapestry has always been in the Hall, and the Nandi Head installed in the museum.”
“Okay, I’m at a loss.” Danny threw his hands in the air. “It’s the middle of the night, can we, please, please, go to bed?”
Steve looked like a wrung out dishcloth, pale, wan, and wrinkled.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” Standing up, Steve peeled off his white gloves and moved around the desk. He paused, momentarily worrying at his bottom lip. “Danny?”
Danny opened his arms, and Steve folded into his hug.
~*~
Tbc
Part ninety eight
Word count: ~3,700
Warning: not that I can think of
Advisory: potty mouth; disability; violence! IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling.
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof \o/ YAY
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
“Shit!” The dirt beneath Danny was disintegrating. A monolith of rock was shearing away from the edge -- a gap was separating a handbreadth before Danny’s feet. Danny scuttled backwards, heels kicking out. He wanted to run, but instinct told him to stay low, to spread out his weight. A horrendous, nail-scraping, blackboard-nerve-screeching noise clawed the air. The rock face started to truly detach.
“Danny!”
He was yanked back by the scruff of his neck, and dragged across the ground.
“Geez--” Danny craned his head around.
Steve, one hand wrapped around one of the sturdy poles delineating the edge, the other twisted in the collar of Danny’s flack jacket, was yanking him back. Adrenalin and fear fuelled Steve. Abreast of the pole, moving into a crouching run, he kept pulling, hauling Danny well past the pole line and onto solid, hard rock.
A numbingly loud crack ricocheted through the air. Steve froze, stopping them dead. Before them the shaft of rock shaved clear off the edge of the cliff face with a boom like a canon.
“Holy Mother of G--” Danny shook.
Abruptly, Steve was in Danny’s space, patting him over, feeling his chest, stroking his hair. There was babbling, but Danny wasn’t too sure who was babbling. Large hands cupped Danny’s face, carefully turning him towards Steve’s wide eyed concern.
Danny forced himself back to reality. He scrunched his fingers in his hair. He had just watched Hesse fall to his death off the cliff. He had almost followed Hesse to his watery death. It was emphatically not like television. Hesse was dead.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Steve said, intent. Two-handed, he hauled Danny to his feet. “You are. You’re okay.”
“I got shot!” Danny protested indignantly. “I almost fell off your stupid peninsula. I’m never letting Grace play out here!”
Steve snorted out a laugh, and abruptly, Danny was mashed up against Steve’s chest, his nose smushed in the hollow of Steve’s throat.
“You’ll be fine,” Steve rumbled, “you just caught a glancing shot. I bet it will hardly bruise. And you were miles away from the edge.”
Danny poked Steve’s side with his pointy finger, making him tickle-wriggle away from its probing.
“I am traumatised!” Danny jabbed him again, and Steve backed off a fraction.
A crazy grin threatened to blossom over Steve’s face. There was a thin ribbon of blood trickling through the stubble from his nose, to spread over the structure of his top lip like tributaries in a river delta.
“You are okay,” Steve said firmly. He cupped the back of Danny’s head, and pulled him into a kiss.
Danny’s brain was going like a freight train: shot; kissing; fighting; plummeting; falling; House; terrorists; Kono; Chin and Malia…. The searchlight from the helicopter framed them in stark light and shadows. Kissing on a precipice in moonlight, illuminated by a shaft of a searchlight -- Danny would have killed for a camera.
“Where are you?” Steve rested his forehead against Danny’s.
“What?” Danny licked his lips, tasting blood.
Warm fingers pressed against his throat. Danny could feel his own pulse thrumming against the cool fingertips.
“Okay, Babe,” Steve said uncharacteristically, “you’re a little shocky. It’s allowed.”
“What?”
Steve slid a large hand under Danny’s heavy vest and pressed his abdomen.
“Ow,” Danny protested. It hadn’t really hurt.
“No rigidity,” Steve said, sounding ridiculously professional. “Come on, back to the House.”
Danny let Steve tow him, hand in hand, back along the paths.
~*~
The House was in an uproar. Every single external light was on, illuminating a scene of chaos. Fire engines, patrol cars, ambulances, and black sedans were stopped left and right. Some vehicles were on the gravel drive, others on the grass. Chin had only just started to reclaim the gardens after the fire engines had torn up the area fighting the Hall fire. There was a stream of fire fighters heading north towards the plume of the burning helicopter, behind the workshops, deep in the woods.
“Sir!” Simons marched over.
“Lieutenant, update.” Steve said, as he angled them over to one of the ambulances.
“Anton Hesse and Jovan Eteinne have been taken to the Honolulu Medical Centre under guard. A third unknown is dead. Paul Leto is in custody, he’s being taken to the Base. Victor Hesse hasn’t been found.”
“We need search and rescue to retrieve his body from Wailele Bay,” Steve said. “The bay north of the peninsula.”
“Retrieve?”
“He fell, very far, after I shot him in the chest,” Steve rapped. “I don’t care how many lives he has, that fall isn’t survivable.”
Smug wasn’t the word that Danny would have used to describe Steve’s expression. Satisfied wasn’t correct either. Nor was content. Perhaps a combination of the three with a soupçon of relief? Maybe not?
“This is Danny Williams,” Steve was saying. “He took a round to his chest. No rigidity, but he’s a little shocky.”
“What?” Danny protested, as he was plopped down on the tailgate of an ambulance and suddenly had two unknown paramedics in his face.
“Just let them check you out, Danny.” Steve made a rapid scan of the immediate area. “Simons, with me.”
Tangled with the bulletproof vest that the paramedics were removing, Danny was momentarily captured. A young man was in his personal space, talking soothingly, as his female companion lifted up Danny’s t-shirt.
“That’s an old scar.” She pressed his abdomen with a hand protected by a glove that tangled tackily with his abundant body hair.
“Hernia decades ago. It caught my intestine. I needed emergency surgery. I was seventeen.” Hardly anyone commented on it. Steve had never even mentioned it, or possibly even realised that it was a scar. Danny barely thought about it.
“You got shot?” the paramedic asked.
Danny winced as she pressed a sensitive spot skirting the edge of his ribs, higher and to the left of the bisecting scar.
“You’re going to have a great bruise, but your ribs are intact. Did you fall? Hit your head?”
“No, I didn’t hit my head.” Danny shook it.
“Let’s just get your blood pressure; you’re looking a little flushed.”
“Sunburn,” Danny explained, moving his arm away from the kid, who was already unfurling a blood pressure cuff.
“We just want to rule out internal bleeding,” the female paramedic said. “I think that you were very lucky that you were wearing the vest.”
“You have no idea.” Danny submitted to their ministrations, guessing that it was the quickest way out of the ambulance.
~*~
Escape came with recommendations to ice the rapidly forming bruise, and take some Tylenol, but not ibuprofen.
The House was in an uproar. There were more people milling around than at their New Year’s Party.
“Danny?” Kono jogged over, skirting around an engineer who was checking the foyer security alarm pad. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. More to the point, are you okay?”
She had a pristine white bandage wrapped around her wrist. She flexed it gingerly.
“Bad punch. My sensi will have more than a few words. I guess. It’s actually different when you’re punching a person for real,” she said ruefully.
“Hesse?” Danny asked.
“Hesse,” Kono confirmed with a grin. “Steve said he fell. He’s dead?”
“It’s easily a straight drop of four hundred-five hundred yards. I don’t think anyone could survive that. I’ll be happier when they find his body, though.” Danny sniffed. “Chin and Malia? Mary? Have you let her out of the catacombs yet?”
“Yeah.” Kono wrinkled her nose.
“She’s not happy with you?” Danny diagnosed.
“Mmmmm, that’s a no,” Kono jigged a little from foot to foot. The twist of her shoulders said she was unrepentant.
“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” Danny said astutely.
“Better safe than sorry.” Kono shrugged. “You know.”
‘You know’ held a multitude of reasons, top of which was Kono apparently didn’t trust Mary, which surprised Danny because Kono was the trusting sort. Danny didn’t trust Mary, but he was a suspicious New Jersey native. Mary had met with Jenna Kaye. Mary had kept the handbag secret. She, by her own words, was not a member of the co-operative, nor did she want to be, and it wasn’t a case of protesting too much.
“Mmmm,” Danny could only echo. “Chin? Malia?”
“Making tea.” Kono pointed at the kitchen.
“Have you seen Steve?”
“Danny, you all right?” Steve strode out of the Seolh office with a Barnabas Simons dedicated shadow on his heels.
“Bruised,” Danny started to expand on the situation, but stopped when Joe White appeared behind them with another tall uniformed officer. He was an older African America man -- grey touched the hair at his temples -- and he was a senior officer based on the multiple stripes on his cuffs. There was an air of confidence around him that Danny wanted to photograph.
“Commander Archer. Mr. Danny Williams,” Steve introduced them, politely.
“Oh, yeah, Steve’s mentioned you.” Danny offered the officer his hand. “Boss, right?”
“Mr. Williams. Dr. Hewson speaks well of your photography skills, and that you’ve taken Corporal Oh under your wing.” Archer had a firm dry grip, the kind that you instinctively liked and respected.
“Hey, I have to ask, was Talmai involved in this?” Danny checked them all for a reaction. “Was he working with Paulo as a -- I dunno -- mole for Wo Fat?”
“Talmai?” Archer asked, eyebrow arched.
“Member of the Kapu, worked closely with Paulo, while Blue was on medical leave, so-to-speak,” Steve explained, standing at attention.
“Your personal, family protection detail,” Archer observed, regarding him.
“Sir,” Steve said.
“Hmmm.”
“Kavika is on his way here. Talmai? I’ll check up on him.” Steve pursed his lips.
“He wanted a night off with his girlfriend,” Danny offered. “Maybe Paulo used that as an opportunity when he saw Steve going off to the Navy surveillance van. Are they all right?”
Steve shook his head.
“Hesse thought that you had found what Wo Fat was looking for.” Archer lifted his chin, and flared broad nostrils. “It wasn’t you going out to the surveillance van with Kaye’s smartphone that triggered this activity. They were planning on questioning you before you found the phone. Commander?”
“Yes, sir, but we haven’t found what Wo Fat’s looking for.”
Ah, of course, Steve had been running out to the van when Danny and Chin had looked at the ledger images. Interestingly, Steve wasn’t mentioning the slides.
“I’m tempted to get every single crime scene investigator linked to PACCOM to turn this house upside down. But on seeing this -- what did you call it, White? -- garage sale, I’m not entirely sure that we would know it if we found it. You’re an intelligent man, Commander, what is Wo Fat looking for?”
“It’s personal, sir. Very valuable to him. I’m guessing that it’s portable. Something that my mother could have stolen from his father.”
“Which you’ve told me, Commander.” Archer regarded Steve from his taller height. “I want specifics. I want the item.”
“Yes, sir.” Steve’s hand twitched as if he aborted a salute.
“There’s more than just finding what P-One is looking for. Our ultimate goal is to capture P-One and dismantle his network,” Archer said, seriously. “This is our trap. Commander, find out what Wo Fat is looking for. The woeful lack of security will be addressed. You are under lockdown, Commander.”
“I can stay,” Joe White said.
“No. Lieutenant Simons.” Archer turned to the younger man.
“Sir.” Simons straightened. Starkly, he was a younger, slimmer version of Archer, gauche in the man’s shadow.
“I understand that you sing in your copious spare time.”
“Yes, sir. Tenor. In my copious spare time.” Manfully, Simons did not smile.
“Well, that seems to be appropriate criteria.” Archer glanced at the ramrod straight Steve. “I am sure that you will fit in in Seolh, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Simons nodded.
Huh, new resident.
“White, you’re with me. Commander.” Archer nodded at Steve.
Steve inclined his head, accepting all orders and instructions without argument.
“Yes, sir.” White followed Archer out of the front door, a respectful three paces behind the commander. At the threshold, White cast a fleetingly obscure glance back over his shoulder before following Archer. Danny didn’t know what to make of it, but maybe Steve was adept at understanding cryptic Joe White communications.
“Is he--” Danny jerked his thumb at the empty doorway, “--like the god of Naval Intelligence? He’s a Commander, like you?”
“No, not lieutenant commander, a commander -- higher rank. And he should be a rear admiral.”
“Commander–commander?” Danny checked.
Steve rolled his eyes. Simons impassively regarded them as if on a parade ground.
“Hmmm.” Danny knuckled his brow. “What now?”
“We’ll--” Steve sniffed and scrubbed at his top lip disturbing flecks of dried blood, “--do clean up. We won’t be allowed near Paulo tonight. I gave NCIS Kaye’s phone. That will take time to analyse. This is frustrating.”
“Brah!” There was a kerfuffle outside.
Steve slid a checking glance to Danny.
“That’s Talmai,” Danny explained, “at the door.”
Steve strode down the corridor on long legs. Simons working to step protectively in front of him; he failed.
“Hey, wait for me.” Danny chased after them.
Talmai was on the veranda, hands half-raised, before three Naval officers. The stocky one at the forefront had her hand on her hip by her holstered weapon.
“You guys okay?” Talmai asked. “Man, Paulo said that I could go see my woman. Man, I didn’t know that this would happen. Oh, fuck it. Kavika is so pissed.”
“Stand down,” Steve ordered the officers.
The woman measurably gauged all the players, before stepping aside to allow the conversation to continue.
“Stevie, is everyone okay?” Talmai asked. “Kono, Mary, Toast?”
“We’re fine.” Steve nodded shortly. “Paulo just took an opportunity. It was ill conceived and badly planned….”
“Babe?” Danny asked as Steve segued into silence.
“Talmai, is Kavika on his way?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, brah.” Talmai nodded like one of those model dogs in the back of people’s cars. “He’s like five minutes behind me.”
“Simons, liaise with S&R. I want Hesse’s body found. Talmai, watch for Kavika; I want to know immediately the status of the Kapu watching Mamo. I need to talk with the security engineers and find out where the signal scrambler is and shut it down.” Steve stared straight at Danny. “Danny, can you check on Malia, Chin, Kono, and Mary for me?”
“Yeah, sure,” Danny said. Normally, he liked to rail against orders, but there was a feverish cast to Steve’s eyes that needed to be assuaged by regaining order.
“Right.” Steve visibly drew himself taller. “Go.”
~*~
What felt like a thousand years later, Danny trooped his way up the twisting stairs to Steve’s eyrie, cognizant of his sore tummy.
Malia and Chin were fine -- Malia had handed him a cup of tea with hands that shook when he had found them in the kitchen, but her eyes had been steady. Kono had, after some cajoling, gone to the ER with Chin to get her wrist x-rayed. That had left Danny with Malia and an angry Mary. She had not appreciated being locked in the catacombs one little bit. Luckily, she didn’t seem to have twigged that Kono had locked her down there because she wasn’t trusted.
The narrow staircase smelled strongly of bleach and fresh paint, competing with charring. There was no evidence that a flash grenade had gone off in the contained space, nor that (Danny assumed) Jovan Eteinne had been badly burnt. Danny stayed away from the glistening white walls. The NCIS clean up team had moved obscenely quickly in Danny’s opinion. It was as if they had worked to obliterate any memory of the attack. Danny wasn’t going to forget it any time soon.
The door to Steve’s apartment was missing. And the clean up team hadn’t been able to remove the evidence of shredding bullet holes in the kitchen wall, although the floor had been swept clean.
The bookcase was back in position, and the diamond wells were empty. The fine wood was marred by splintering dints. Books were in strategic piles on the floor alongside the bookcase. No rhyme or reason dictated the multiple Leaning Towers of Pisa, waiting patiently to be put back in position.
The only light was the television, which was still on, sharing infomercials with no one.
It was close to two o’clock in the morning, but Danny didn’t think that Steve was in bed. Sniffing absently, he rubbed at his sunburnt nose.
Where was Steve?
Danny looked in the most obvious place, the museum office.
“Hey.” Sitting at the desk, Steve looked up as Danny stepped into the room. “How’s Kono?”
“Just bruised,” Danny reported, “no breaks.”
“Good,” Steve said tersely.
“Whatcha doing?” Danny drawled on seeing that Steve held a doll. He pointed his thumb at the shelf behind his left shoulder. “Playing with dolls? Your GI Joe is in the box up there.”
The wooden doll wore a long collared tunic, which splayed at the waist. The figure was possibly Chinese -- well, Danny wasn’t too sure of the style. It was the first doll from the suite of slides. The vase was set solidly on the desk at Steve’s elbow. It was bigger than Danny had guessed from the images, easily three foot tall, typically shaped, black with a gold five-clawed dragon curling around the body. A warrior holding a bow cocked an arrow, threatening the dragon.
Danny reached out to touch the gilt.
“Best not,” Steve warned absently.
Belatedly, Danny realised that Steve was wearing white cotton gloves.
“Oh.” Danny clasped his hands firmly behind his back. “Valuable?”
“Mmmm,” Steve said uninformatively. “Fourteen century. Yuan Dynasty. Unusual for the date. It’s been repainted circa the Sixteenth Century, adding the gold highlights so that the dragon erroneously gained five claws. Essentially, they vandalised the vase.”
“Stolen?” Danny hedged.
Steve glanced up from his contemplation of the doll.
“Do you think that your Mom stole this Chinese vase from Wo Yongfu?” Danny clarified.
“No.” Steve shook his head. “I have its provenance. My great-great-grandfather purchased it from a collector in Beijing.”
Danny rolled his eyes.
“What?”
“Great-great-grandad bought it for the museum?” Danny said with a hint of mocking.
“Yes,” Steve said seriously, eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion, evidently getting a hint of the tone. “He was a patron of the arts.”
“Patron of the arts,” Danny echoed sing-song. “Do you not think that these things should be on display instead of stuck in the attic?”
“Well, the vase used to be on that little round table in the foyer. But when me and Mary moved in permanently, Grandmother moved it up here for its own safety.”
Visions of a teenage Mary and Steve careening around the House chasing each other scrolled across Danny’s mind’s eye.
“Did Great-great-grandad buy the doll?”
“Funnily enough, yeah, same time as the vase. But he’s a 17th Century Qing dynasty Manchu bannerman.” Steve held up the doll for Danny’s benefit. Belatedly, Danny realised that the doll was male, short of stature and stocky.
“That’s Chinese?” Danny asked.
Steve hummed and harred. “In so far as much as the Manchu conquered the then Chinese Empire and established the Qing dynasty.”
“Okay? How does that link with the storyline of the slides?” Danny asked, thinking hard. “The link with China is obvious: coins, vase, doll…”
“But--” Carefully, Steve picked up a second doll from a protective layer of tissue paper, “--this one is Sioux, probably Lakota.”
It was another male doll. The long black hair had thrown Danny’s first impression. The beadwork on the tunic was incredibly detailed as were the carefully reconstructed belt and knife, and the strap of a tiny bow case over the warrior’s shoulder. The doll held a stave with a mounted stone.
“China. Native American,” Danny mused. “Have you found the third doll?”
“No. Grandmother might have knitted clothes for it and it’s in with her stuff in the reception rooms.”
“That third doll was white, wasn’t it?” Danny squinted, thinking hard. It was a porcelain baby-girl doll with blonde ringlets and creepy glass eyes.
“I don’t know what story it tells,” Steve said glumly.
“Maybe,” Danny pondered, “the whole sequence isn’t relevant to Wo Fat? The photographs of your dad’s car and that Koji guy were from your mom’s ‘friendly’ investigations into the Yakuza? And then she finished the film off after she stole the ledger? Although taking the set up shots of the beach at your old home was strange.”
“In what way?”
“Did she develop film? I’m just guessing, but taking photos of your home, and then giving them to the CIA to develop seems a little hinky?”
Steve’s thumbnail went to his lips as he digested those thoughts.
“She never developed the film, though, did she,” Steve said around his thumbnail. “I’m guessing things moved fast. Mom was a planner. Even picnics were full on battle plans. Yet, you mentioned that some of those slides you developed were out of focus and shaky. Did dad leaving with Koji in the Mercury Marquis trigger something?”
“Like what?
“We’ve speculated before that while she was assigned to the Noshimuri family, she was working the Chinese Triad angle. I mean, there’s the photographs that you developed from Southern China or North Korea. So something alerted the Chinese Triad Dragon Head that she was not just a housewife. Between taking the Mercury Marquis photo she acquired the ledger. She finished the slide film, maybe taking random shots around the House, and then hid the undeveloped film roll and coins under the floorboards back at our old place.”
“All of those things couldn’t have been laying around in the same place? She didn’t just randomly shoot pictures,” Danny pointed out.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Steve said. “The tapestry has always been in the Hall, and the Nandi Head installed in the museum.”
“Okay, I’m at a loss.” Danny threw his hands in the air. “It’s the middle of the night, can we, please, please, go to bed?”
Steve looked like a wrung out dishcloth, pale, wan, and wrinkled.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” Standing up, Steve peeled off his white gloves and moved around the desk. He paused, momentarily worrying at his bottom lip. “Danny?”
Danny opened his arms, and Steve folded into his hug.
~*~
Tbc
Part ninety eight
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-28 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-02 07:51 am (UTC)Thanks for staying with the story, Simplyn2deep.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-28 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-02 07:51 am (UTC)Oh my
Date: 2014-06-29 01:50 am (UTC)Re: Oh my
Date: 2014-07-02 07:52 am (UTC)*g*
no subject
Date: 2014-07-02 02:08 pm (UTC)Looking forward to where you take us next. And hoping to see poor Simons sing for his supper. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-04 08:20 pm (UTC)General comment...
Date: 2014-07-04 07:57 pm (UTC)By the way: we both are born on 6th June - I was completely surprised when I've read this.
I hope my English is not too bad...
Regards
Philippa