Fic: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit (H50, Steve/Danny, M) Part 2

[alassenya]

For introduction and warnings, see Part 1


Part 2

Once Chin had left, the three SEALs lost no time in packing up and leaving the office they'd appropriated.

"Why do you think Hesse is still in the forest?" asked Danny. "Wouldn't he have doubled back to the road?"

McGarrett shook his head. "No. Normally I'd say yes - Hesse is a city boy, he's not that comfortable in jungle or forest - but there's only one road along the coast on this side. We're stopping all the cars, and on foot he'd be a sitting duck for a FLIR-equipped helo or car and he knows it, so west is out. The ridges run roughly east-west in this area, which makes heading north very difficult - I could do it, but he doesn't know where the paths are. So that leaves a choice of east or south."

"There are more houses and cars to the south. More options for him."

"And a lot more activity in a couple of hours, including cops who'll have been alerted and will be looking for him. He can't afford the risk. That means we go east."

"I hope you're right."

"So do I. With a bit of luck we'll have him boxed him in between the ridges and the Naval Station." McGarrett flashed him a grin, and Danny realized with a jolt that the man was quite attractive. Not that it meant anything to him, of course. He was only here because he had to be.

They quickly made it to the green where Hesse had been talking to Heleka. McGarrett tracked the early part of Hesse's flight through the woods easily - Hesse had been in too much of a hurry to think about the tracks he was leaving, and there were footprints and broken twigs that even Danny could see. Then the ground opened out into a clearing and they saw the scorch marks where Hesse had thrown the grenade.

McGarrett scouted around until he found the remains of the casing. "Standard Chinese military issue," he mused, turning over the fragment in his hands, and then sniffing it. "What the hell is Hesse doing with Chinese armaments?"

Danny shook his head. "Don't know, but I could ask Chin to check with the Vice team. We do have some local gangs - triads, yakuza, and islander gangs - but they tend to use small-scale stuff, hand-guns, shotguns, the occasional Uzi. I haven't heard of any of them using hand grenades."

McGarrett pocket the fragment. "OK, we'll check it out later. Right now it's more important to get Hesse."

"Can you sense him?" asked Danny.

"No. I can generally track him by heartbeat if he's close, and by scent if he's left a recent trail, but he's getting more and more careful about that." He pointed to a patch of mud with several deep footprints. "Look, he's covered his shoes in mud, and I bet he'll have done his hands and face too - camo for sight and smell. There's still some residue from his body odor, but it's faint and diffuse now. If there's any running water he'll douse himself in it and weaken it further."

"So we're back to square one."

"Not quite. This area can be very confusing to a non-native, and he's going to lose cell signal fairly quickly so he won't have phone GPS until he gets out of the valleys." He paused. "On the other hand, if he's already realized he's boxed in he'll be heading south west along the ridge." He turned to Gray and Rosetti. "You two, head due east until you hit the ridge, then follow it south-west. If you spot any recent tracks, or if you reach the road without any sign of him, let me know."

Danny reached for his phone. "I'll ask Chin to organize a patrol car to run up and down the coast road."

"Good thinking."

The two SEALs headed off, and McGarrett turned north, with Danny following.

Half an hour later, Danny was out of breath, his trainers were slipping and sliding over the wet leaves and loose soil, and he was hoping that they could catch up to Hesse fast, engage in the obligatory bluster and gun-fight and then get the hell out of the jungle and back to civilization. All right, so it was tropical rainforest, not jungle, but it was still humid and unpleasant and dark, and entirely too full of mud, a large amount of which had transferred itself to his clothing.

"I need a break," he panted. He stopped and braced his hands on his knees, sucking in deep breaths.

"You need to train more," said McGarrett, turning back. He sounded irritated.

"I do not need to train more. You are not making allowances for the fact that your legs are a foot longer than mine."

"That much, huh?"

"At least."

McGarrett looked him over from top to toe. "I think you exaggerate," he said with a smile.

"Whatever." Danny certainly wasn't going to waste any more breathing time on a pointless argument. "Are you still tracking him?"

McGarrett nodded. "He's not far away now. We've made up a lot of ground, but once he realizes there's no way out he'll start setting traps."

"Are you sure there's no way out?"

McGarrett shrugged. "He can't get over the ridge, not without some serious climbing equipment. And while it's possible he might find a gap in the perimeter fence, it's not going to help him much if he ends up trapped inside the base."

"He could take hostages."

McGarrett frowned at that. "Won't do him much good. I know the governor, she doesn't negotiate."

"OK." Danny straightened up.

"Stick close behind me," ordered McGarrett. "The closer we get, the more likely he is to leave another booby-trap."

They set off again. Danny wished that he was a more experience hiker, or at least that he had a military GPS like McGarrett did, because he really had no idea where they were. He sensed that their path was curved, but it was so hard to tell with the uneven terrain. He just hoped that Hesse was similarly confused.

They scrambled up the ridge for another few hundred yards. Danny was getting winded, and his world had contracted down to what was just in front of him - which, most of the time, was McGarrett's ass. It was a pretty good ass, as they went, and since, like all guides and sentinels, he had been encouraged towards bisexuality, he could appreciate its finer points. On the other hand, the ass belonged to an overbearing military asshole with no sense of his own limitations, and that wasn't nearly as attractive a prospect. He gritted his teeth and tried to focus on the ground instead.

Ten minutes later, McGarrett stopped suddenly.

"What is it?" asked Danny.

McGarrett turned and put a finger to his lips and cocked his head. Danny found his hand automatically going to the sentinel's shoulder to anchor him as he listened.

"We're getting closer. Stay down and stay quiet."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Hesse is a city boy, remember. He smells of gas and polyester and fried foods and some god-awful shampoo he probably picked up from his last hotel. His scent is much stronger now, more recent, and it's easy to follow here because it's so alien."

"Ah."

"And I think I can pick up the sound of him moving - over there," he pointed to the south-east.

"How far away?"

McGarrett cocked his head. "Hard to say, exactly - two hundred yards, maybe, but the margin of error in terrain like this is pretty wide."

"What's the best approach?" It didn't feel at all strange to Danny to be asking McGarrett's advice. He might be the cop but he wasn't a tracker, and here in the rainforest he was so far out of his element that he was as likely to make things worse as to help.

McGarrett paused and checked with Rosetti and Gray. After a short cryptic conversation, comprising mostly numbers and acronyms, he turned to Danny and said, "You stay here. I'm going to try and go around and steer him in your direction."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Danny started, but he was interrupted.

"I want to start pushing him south, towards the others. I don't want to run the risk of him finding a gap in the fence and getting away from us completely."

"We should stick together."

"It would take a lot longer, and it's going to start getting light in a couple of hours. I don't want to lose the advantage."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Look, you said it yourself, I'm not a tracker, I'm going to get lost if we separate."

"You don't have to move, just stay here."

"How do you know he's going to move in my direction?"

"I don't. You're insurance to make sure he doesn't head west. If you hear him, start to make a bit of noise, try to spook him into changing direction again."

"This is not going to work."

"Don't be so negative."

"I'm not being negative, I'm being realistic. Flushing a man out of the jungle takes a lot more than two men."

"There are four of us."

"And the other two are too far away at the moment. That leaves you and me, and I don't think it's a good idea to separate. He might have another of those dual-sense strobes."

McGarrett glared at him. "He'd better not have."

"But what if he does? He'll put a bullet through you if you zone out and there's no one around to save your ass."

"I'll take that risk."

"Bullshit you will. You forced me to come along because you needed a guide. Well this is me guiding you. You do not go out on your own against a known killer who is experienced in anti-sentinel tactics. If you really want to commit suicide there are easier and faster ways."

"I'm not suicidal."

"Then you're doing a good impression of it."

"Fuck you."

"Not tonight, I have a headache. And too much mud getting into unmentionable places."

McGarrett raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth, but the angry comeback Danny was expecting never eventuated. Instead there was a flash of alarm on the SEAL's face, followed by a shove that sent him to the ground and the zing of bullets overhead.

McGarrett sent a few shots back and then took off at a fast pace in the direction of the bullets. There was a second exchange of shots, then, more distantly, a third.

Danny waited a few seconds, until the sounds of two men running off at speed faded, then slowly rolled over and sat up. His left arm throbbed and, looking at it, he realized that he'd been shot. He gingerly tested the movement of his fingers, wrist, elbow and shoulder, and came to the conclusion that it was a just a graze, for which he was profoundly thankful. It was bleeding heavily, though, and here he was without so much as a handkerchief to bind it.

With a weary and pained sigh, he set to work removing his vest, sweatshirt and t-shirt. The t-shirt was hardly clean - he'd been sleeping in it - but at least it wasn't covered in mud and leaves and it was thin enough that he might be able to tie a knot in the fabric to put pressure on the wound.

He found the knife he knew Chin kept in the vest, and cut a strip off the bottom of the t-shirt. The rest of it he folded to make a pad and placed it over the wound. He had to hold his arm out horizontal so the pad didn't fall off, and it hurt a lot, which made him reel off a string of curses. Slowly, using his teeth and his one good hand, he maneuvered the strip of cloth around his arm and even managed to tie a knot - he suspected it was a granny and not a reef knot, but he wasn't going to take it apart and do it again. It wasn't as tight as he would have liked, either, but at least he wasn't dripping blood onto the ground any more. Then, even more slowly, he put on the sweatshirt and tac vest again, and settled himself up against a convenient tree trunk to think.

He took stock of his situation: alone, somewhere in the Wai'anae forest reserve, with no GPS, no phone signal, no radio, not even a bottle of water … it was not a good starting point. Any attempt to move in the dark would have him going around in circles, and with his luck he'd run into Hesse rather than the SEALs.

Reluctantly, he came to the conclusion that his only option was to remain exactly where he was until daylight, then head away from the sun until he hit the coast road. Once he had a phone signal he could call Chin and ask for a car to pick him up. He'd also ask if the SEALs had reported in. It had been - he checked his watch - over half an hour since McGarrett had left him, and he hadn't heard anything after the initial flurry of shots. Maybe Hesse was dead and they were waiting for daylight themselves. On the other hand, maybe Hesse had got the drop on McGarrett again. He shivered. The thought of him lying dead or wounded somewhere was surprisingly painful, and Danny tried to reassure himself that the man would be all right. He was a SEAL, he was a sentinel, he was used to working alone, there was nothing to be worried about … except that Hesse knew he was a sentinel, and knew of a sentinel's vulnerabilities.

"Dammit, McGarrett," he cursed softly. "Why bother with dragging me all the way out here and then leaving me behind? You're a sentinel, not Superman, dammit."

Time passed. His arm throbbed. He thought about Rachel, the wife and sentinel he'd loved and lost. She had always believed that one should live life to the fullest, accepting and using all talents and gifts and taking every opportunity that came along. She would be telling him to work with McGarrett; to take this opportunity to be a guide again; to embrace that side of him he'd locked away for three years.

"I miss you, Rachel," he whispered, and felt the grief wash over him again. "I wish you were here now."

His reverie was interrupted by a sound of movement through the undergrowth, somewhere off to his right. He turned and brought up his gun, resting it on his bent knee. There were four armed men roaming the forest tonight, he told himself, and only one of them was Hesse, so that meant that there was only a 25% chance this intruder was the enemy. That didn't stop Danny from preparing to defend himself as best he might, but he couldn't afford to be trigger-happy. At least sitting on the ground he presented a smaller target if it was Hesse.

There was more rustling, then a grunting sound. "Oh wonderful," Danny muttered. "The smell of blood is attracting some wild carnivorous beast and McGarrett'll come back to find gnawed bones and a few chunks of flesh."

His gloomy prognosis was forestalled by the return of McGarrett himself, who appeared out of the jungle in front of him, like a wraith. "You're exaggerating again."

Danny jumped, but managed not to fire. "Fuck, McGarrett, don't frighten me like that!"

"Sorry." He came closer, and Danny saw that he was moving slowly and carefully.

"Did he get you?"

"Not really. Vest took the impact."

"I thought you said he was a lousy shot."

"He was. He must have been practicing."

"Well that's comforting to know," he muttered.

"How about you?"

Danny started to lift his arm, but winced. "Took a graze to the left arm."

"Here, let me take a look." He squatted down and reached for the arm.

Danny waved him off. "No, it's OK, I covered it. I'll get it looked at when we get back to Honolulu.

"Are you sure?" McGarrett frowned, peering through the hole in the sweatshirt at the improvised bandage.

"Yeah, it would do more harm than good taking it down again out here."

"True."

"So where's Hesse?"

McGarrett ducked his head a little. "He got away from me. I got winded when he shot me, and when I dialed down the pain, my hearing went too." He shook his head. "I don't know why, that's never happened to me before."

"You didn't take the time to recalibrate properly, that's why. And all your senses will be unreliable when you're emotionally upset."

"I've been upset before, it's never been this bad."

Danny stared at him. Was the man really that dense? "You never lost your father before. And he was murdered, that makes it worse. Seriously, you should have been pulled off active duty immediately. I'm surprised that your unit commander allowed you to continue."

"He knows how important this is. I can't afford to lose momentum, I have to keep chasing Hesse until we bring him down."

"You really don't hear yourself, do you? This isn't just a case to you any more, this is an obsession, and obsessions get you killed."

McGarrett ran a hand over his face, smearing the dirt already there. "Whatever. Let's get going. I still think we have a chance to intercept him if we head south and then west."

"Where are the others?"

"Down by the ridge. I'm hoping that Hesse will run straight into them."

"I still think this would work better with a lot more people."

"Well, I don't."

"That's obvious," Danny muttered. "Oh well, let's get on with it." He dragged himself to his feet and rolled his shoulders, trying to work out a little of the stiffness from sitting too long on cold ground. His arm still throbbed but there was no point in trying to improvise a sling as he would need both arms for balance.

They set off again, McGarrett leading the way, and Danny noted the difference immediately - McGarrett was slower, more cautious, watching the ground carefully, and stopping every few steps to listen (or at least, giving the appearance of listening). He suspected that McGarrett's senses were oscillating, and once again cursed the man for being a stubborn fool who wouldn't take advice.

When McGarrett tripped and fell over, Danny decided that enough was enough. He ripped the radio set from McGarrett's head and pressed the button to talk.

"Rosetti? I'm pulling McGarrett from the mission - hey!" he finished with a yell as McGarrett tried to snatch the radio back, but the man's fingers were clumsy, just confirming what Danny suspected.

"Ignore that last," McGarrett shouted, but Danny wasn't stopping. "His senses are completely out of control, he's lost all sense of touch and a lot of his hearing, and I suspect his eyesight is cycling. He's tripping over his own feet now. He's a danger to himself and others, and as his official guide I am giving you notice that he is not fit to continue this mission."

"You bastard," McGarrett spat the words at him. "I can feel."

Danny leaned forward, and with his body obscuring McGarrett's field of vision, he jabbed the muzzle of his gun against the man's leg. "If you can feel, how come you didn't feel me shoot you in the leg?"

"What?" McGarrett pushed Danny away and grabbed his leg to look. Finding no wound, he stared up at Danny, a look of complete betrayal on his face.

Danny sat back, grimly satisfied. "You had to look. You didn't feel anything. You had to look." He continued more gently, "You've lost all sense of touch, haven't you."

McGarrett sighed and his shoulders slumped. "Yeah. Everything's cycling, like you said. I just don't know what to do."

Danny set his gun down and picked up the radio set, still dangling from McGarrett's neck.

"Rosetti, you there?"

"Yes, detective. Is the commander OK?"

"He will be. He took a couple of hits in the vest and tried to dial down pain, and I think that just tipped everything out of control. Can you get a fix on us?"

There was a pause, then, "Yes, you're about a mile and a half north of us."

"OK, I'm going to stay here for a while and see what I can do to get his senses under control again. If we manage that, we'll start to head back to the coast, but we'll radio in before we move."

"Roger that. We'll head north to your position, not sure how long it will take us, but no more than an hour."

"Thanks, chief. Er … over and out."

He gently replaced the headset over McGarrett's ear.

"Still with me, McGarrett?"

There was a tiny nod of the head, and Danny felt a sudden impulse to give him a hug. Yes, the man was a self-righteous, overconfident, gun-happy asshole, but he was hurting, both physically and emotionally, and Danny was a guide and was the only person in the world who could help him right now.

"Just concentrate on those dials for now, tune into my voice, my heartbeat. Look at me, feel my hand on your face, take in the scent of the forest around us. Don't concentrate on any one sense, just relax and let all the inputs flow. Take even, deep breaths, that's it, relax and open up to your senses."

He continued talking for a few minutes longer, until he noticed that McGarrett was tensing up.

"What's wrong?"

"Chest."

"OK, so we have to fine-tune that touch dial. I'm going to keep on rubbing your cheek here, try and tune down pain so it's comfortable to breathe, but not so much that you can't feel my touch."

McGarrett nodded, and Danny watched him closely as he battled with his own brain to reassert control.

Finally McGarrett looked up. "Thanks," he muttered.

Danny guessed it had cost McGarrett a lot to say that, and he wasn't going to be a prick about it. "You're welcome," he replied with a wry grin. Their eyes met, and for just a second, Danny felt something soothing and calm flow between them. Then McGarrett's gaze dropped, and the feeling was gone.

"I think I can move safely now," McGarrett said, stretching out his arms and legs. "The chest is ... not painful, precisely, more just an awareness."

"How about the rest of you?"

"I can feel my hands and feet again, the left ankle is a little sore, I think I twisted it a bit when I fell, but it's not sore enough to be serious."

"You sure?"

McGarrett nodded. "I'm sure. And however much I want to catch Hesse, I'm not stupid enough to try and walk on a seriously damaged ankle. It'll be fine in a couple of days."

"Good. You let your men know we're moving, then."

A couple of minutes later, they started heading back, on a roughly south-west heading that followed the contour of the ground. Danny was glad they weren't fighting the terrain any more -- his arm was distinctly painful now and he had never had much luck at tuning his own senses, though Rachel had encouraged him to try. They weren't hurrying either, but it didn't seem long before Danny could see the lights of the condos near the country club. He felt a sense of relief - it wouldn't be long now and they would be back in civilization, with roads and electricity and cell phone reception.

"Nearly there," he breathed, as much to himself as to the man beside him.

"You should call Kelly as soon as we get reception, get a car to pick you up. I'll wait for my men."

"No. I'll call Chin, sure, but we'll both wait for you and your team."

"You need to get that arm seen to."

"And you need to get your chest and ankle X-rayed."

McGarrett opened his mouth to argue, but something in Danny's expression must have made him back off, because he said, "Fine, we'll both wait."

Danny turned his head so McGarrett wouldn't see him smile. It seemed as though the sentinel could be trained after all.

Part 3