Fic: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit (H50, Steve/Danny, M) Part 1
Title: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit
Author: Alassenya
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Genre: Adventure, romance, Sentinel & Guide.
Rating: Mature
Word Count: ~25000
Warnings: Violence, swearing, grief, angst (no sex, sorry about that).
Prompt: "Steve is an un-bonded Sentinel who goes on a warpath/feral when his father is killed and he goes hunting Hesse. The Governor authorized a strike force to take him down, but while they're on the chase, Steve ends up kidnapping a Guide [Danny] who he eventually bonds with."
Summary: Danny is a former guide who moved to Hawaii with his daughter after Rachel (his wife and sentinel) died three years previously. Steve is a military sentinel who prefers to work alone. Their worlds collide when Steve's father is murdered and he returns to Hawaii to hunt down the killer.
Author's Note: The story doesn't adhere to the prompt in every particular, but I hope it's close enough. For those who don't know The Sentinel, it was a series that ran from 1996-1999. Sentinels have enhanced senses that allow them to detect things far beyond the normal human limits, but they are vulnerable to spikes (sudden overwhelming sensations) and zones (trances caused by over-concentration). A sentinel's function and control is improved with the aid of a guide.
[Addendum: the extended edition of this story is now available at Dreamwidth and AO3]
Part 1
Danny woke to the shrill tone of his cell phone. He squinted at the clock: 0140. He'd barely been asleep an hour.
"Williams," he managed to grunt.
"Danny, it's Chin, I need your help."
"Why? What happened?"
"You know that murder case I'm working on? The retired cop?"
"Yeah." Danny hadn't known the man himself, but almost everyone else in the department did, and there had been a lot of discussion and speculation about it in the station. The Navy had sent a sentinel over to help track the killer, which Danny had though a bit of an overkill, but then he tended to avoid sentinels and anything to do with them since his bereavement and retirement as a guide. Some memories were just too painful to risk having them brought up in conversation.
"The sentinel that came over went into a zone while they were trying to track the guy they think did it. They can't get him out."
"Where's his guide?"
"He doesn't have one. He's unbonded, he uses temps sometimes, but his last temp got killed a few weeks ago."
"Shit." That was bad. Some sentinels refused to use a guide, which was fine with Danny as long as they didn't bitch about the consequences - zones, spikes, synesthesia and (in Danny's experience) ridiculously bad tempers. An unbonded sentinel in the military was rare, though, since a zone-out could easily be fatal. The guy had to be a real hot-shot to get away with it in uniform.
"Can you come over, Danny? He's so deep he didn't even register us moving him."
"If he's unbonded, his team members should know how to bring him out."
"They've tried. Nothing's working."
Danny rolled over onto his back and groaned. He was tired, he was pissed off and the last thing he wanted to do was get up out of his nice warm bed and drive to wherever Chin was to talk some military idiot out of a zone that he wouldn't have gone into if he'd had the sense to organize a temp guide like he was supposed to. Sentinel + trauma + high-stress situation = unreliable senses. It was Guiding 101, for fuck's sake.
"Danny?" Chin prompted.
Danny groaned again. "All right, I'll do it. Just send me the location."
"We're on the west side, Wai'anae country club. Go straight in the front door, we're using the manager's office."
"Fine, I'll be there when I get there."
He ended the call and got out of bed, pulling on sweat pants and top. He grabbed his gun and badge, and picked up the phone just as it beeped receipt of a message - the GPS coordinates.
* * *
Forty minutes later he pulled up in front of the Wai'anae country club. One office was lit but the rest of the building remained relatively dark. A guy in black tac gear stood inside the door and waved him into to the office, following him in and closing the door. Inside he found Chin perched on the desk with his shotgun cradled in his arm, and another military type sitting in an armchair and looking a bit pale. The one who had followed him leaned up against the door.
Chin looked slightly ruffled but was otherwise unharmed. "Guys, this is Detective Williams. Danny, meet Chief Rosetti and Petty Officer Gray, SEAL Team Ten."
Armchair guy and door guy nodded respectively.
Danny nodded and turned back to Chin. "What happened?"
"I figured Hesse - the killer - would be looking for weapons, so I put the word out. I got a tip that something was going down here, so we came to check it out. We found Hesse talking to Heleka on the golf course."
"Great." They'd figured Heleka as a gun runner a while back, but it had proved very difficult to get any hard evidence on him. He ran a hand through his hair. "Where's Heleka now?"
"Meka and Kono took him back to the station. They'll sweat him for info but he didn't seem to know much - I think Hesse was a new customer to him."
"Who was driving?"
"Meka."
They exchanged an evil grin. If Meka was driving, that meant Kono was in the back with the dealer. Most people underestimated Kono, which she encouraged and used to her advantage. If the dealer tried to escape - or worse, tried to hit on her - he was going to discover that a fragile-looking young woman could pack a vicious punch. It made them wish they could be there when the car arrived at the station.
Chin returned to his story. "There were a couple of shots fired. Heleka was winged and Hesse ran off. The SEALs ran after him but by then the sentinel was already zoned. I did a scout around the green but there was no one else there - if he had a bodyguard there, he must have done a runner. Then the SEALs came back. One of them had a leg injury so he went with Heleka, and I helped these two bring the sentinel here. They couldn't bring him out of the zone so I rang you."
"For which I am sincerely ungrateful," Danny quipped.
"I'll pick up some coco puffs in the morning," Chin offered.
"You'd better." He gave a moment's thought to Grace, who was trying to make him eat more healthily, and then decided that what she didn’t know wouldn't hurt her. "OK, where is he? And what's his name?"
Rosetti nodded at the door leading to an inner office. "Through there. He's on the sofa. We kept it dark."
Danny nodded.
"And his name's McGarrett," said the other. "Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett."
"McGarrett?" Danny frowned. "Isn't that the same as the cop who was killed last week?"
"His son," Chin said, with a sigh.
Danny gaped at him, then exploded. "No, no, no, no, no! I don't fucking believe this!"
The two SEALs looked stunned by Danny's outburst. He jabbed his fingers at them.
"Are you idiots? Seriously? You put a severely traumatized sentinel into the field to track his father's murderer? After he just lost his guide?"
"The admiral said -"
"I don't fucking care what the admiral said. It takes months to get over either one of those losses, and you just send him straight back out on his own? I couldn't write a better recipe for loss of sensory control if I sat down and studied it for a fortnight! Between the zones and the spikes he'll be psychotic when he isn't catatonic. Seriously, you people are Neanderthals. You don't deserve to work with a sentinel."
"We didn't send him," muttered the guy by the door - Gray.
"We just couldn't stop him," added Rosetti.
"Did you actually try?" asked Daniel.
"He was almost feral," said Gray.
"Yeah. Once he knew it was Hesse we just couldn't stop him. Even the admiral suggested he sit this one out but McGarrett wouldn't take no for an answer."
Danny couldn't stop his fists from clenching. "Believe it or not there are ways to control a sentinel gone feral."
"Yeah," said Rosetti, "and most of them involve heavy-duty tranquillizers and four-point restraint. Which means he'd be out of action for days, if not weeks."
"We don't have that much time," added Gray. "And Hesse is a real bad guy. It's not just McGarrett's dad, he's killed a whole bunch of people over the years. If we don't get McGarrett up and functional in the next couple of hours Hesse will be off the island and we'll be back to square one."
"What about your spy-eyes?"
"Hesse headed for the forest, he's under the canopy. We need ground trackers."
Danny glanced at Chin, whose expression was eloquent enough. HPD had a couple of canine units, but it would take hours to get authorization and then they would need something of Hesse's for the dogs to sniff. And with it being autumn, the chance of rain washing away all the scent trail was pretty high.
Rosetti said, "McGarrett can track Hesse like no one else can. We really need him."
Danny sighed. He wanted to leave. He really, really wanted to turn around and walk out of the door and go him and leave them to sort out the mess they'd got themselves into. But that meant leaving a sentinel - a distressed, grieving sentinel - in a prolonged zone-out. He knew from his training and a few incidents with Rachel that the longer a sentinel was left in a zone, the longer it took to get them out, and the more difficult it became.
He could feel himself weakening. He owed this guy nothing. He hadn't been introduced to the man, hadn't spoken to him, hadn't even set eyes on him, and yet … he could feel a pull, a tenuous, fragile link to whoever was in the next room. Whether it was mere sympathy or something more, he couldn't tell, but he couldn't ignore it.
He took a deep breath. "Look, I'll give it a go, but no promises."
Both SEALs relaxed somewhat, and Danny shook his head. They were acting like it was a done deal, which was far from the truth. "OK. What sense did he zone on?"
They both looked at him, blankly.
"Sight, maybe?" said Gray.
"No, I think it was hearing," said Rosetti.
Danny rolled his eyes. "I need more than a 'maybe'. I need to know. What exactly happened out there?"
The two SEALs exchanged looks and then Rosetti said, "McGarrett knows Hesse. Like I said, he's been chasing him for years. He knows him well enough to track him by his heartbeat if we can get close enough. That's what we were trying to do. Detective Kelly said there was a weapons guy over this side of the island who was a likely contact. McGarrett picked up Hesse's voice a mile away and we sent in the drone. Between the two of them we isolated Hesse to one of the greens. We were approaching but didn't have line of sight. Something spooked Hesse -"
"I think he spotted the drone," put in Gray.
"Yeah, could have been that. Anyway, he threw a strobe ball at us and ran."
"Ouch," muttered Danny. Strobe balls were quite effective against sentinels; the flashing light quickly consumed all visual attention. Most sentinels were trained to overcome the impending zone, though, especially military and police ones. "But he's been strobed before, hasn’t he? He's trained with them?"
"Yeah, he's normally good at ignoring it. And this one must have been defective, because it stopped flashing after a few seconds, but he didn't pull out."
Gray added, "At first I thought he was ignoring the strobe and tracking Hesse by sound, so we halted and tried to be quiet. Then we realized it wasn't just concentration, it was a zone, so I stayed with him and the others went after Hesse."
"Bastard," muttered Rosetti. "He led us straight into a booby trap. Thompson was lucky he only caught a bit of the blast."
"Did anyone pick up the strobe ball?" asked Danny.
Gray and Rosetti looked at each other. "No, I don't think so."
"I'd really like to see it."
Rosetti stood. "I'll go. I'm pretty sure I remember where it is."
"Good. I'll get started then."
"Thanks, detective, we really appreciate this," Gray said.
"Don't expect miracles, guys. I haven't guided anyone since my wife died. I don't know if he'll respond to me any more than he did to you, and it could take hours before he's able to control his senses enough to track anyone. And there's every chance that Hesse could double back to the coast road and be on the other side of the island by dawn."
Chin nodded at that. "I've already alerted the police and port authorities. Can you guys do the same on the military side?"
"Sure," they nodded.
Danny left them sorting out details and walked through to the inner office. The room was fairly dark, illuminated only by the light coming in from the door. The stricken sentinel was lying on a sofa, curled up in a fetal position, not moving. Danny left the door ajar and approached him slowly, murmuring reassurances under his breath.
"Sentinel McGarrett, Steve, I'm Danny Williams, from the Honolulu Police Department. Chin called me in to see if I could help you, he knows I used to be a Guide. I know you lost your father a few days ago, and you lost your guide a couple of weeks back. I know that must have been really hard for you. I lost my sentinel three years ago. She was my wife too, so I know how it feels, I know how tempting it is to curl up and escape for a while."
He reached the bed and put out a tentative hand. There was no reaction when he gently patted the man's shoulder, so he started to run his hand up and down the arm, slowly and soothingly, still talking.
"But you can't stay zoned, you know. You're needed. You're chasing someone. They tell me it's important, that this guy killed your father. I get that you lost control when you saw him. I get that you have an overwhelming urge to kill the fucker. But you need to use your brain as well as your senses. You need to come back, out of that zone."
He talked for almost ten minutes, gradually altering the tone of his voice from soothing to 'guide imperative', but there was no response. Damn. It looked like Rosetti had been right and the sentinel had zoned on hearing. Smell was usually next, but he didn't have anything on him. If he'd been home he would have used coffee or mint or some herbs, but he didn't even have so much as a packet of chewing gum on him. He'd showered only a couple of hours ago, using the same organic unscented products he'd used while Rachel was alive, so there was no help there.
He rose and made his way quietly to the outer room. Rosetti had just returned, and Chin was examining the strobe carefully. It was the size of a golf ball, grey and innocuous-looking.
Danny spread his hands in apology. "I'm not getting anywhere with hearing. Do any of you guys have anything that smells or tastes strong? Chewing gum? Breath mints? Candies? Hell, even beef jerky would do."
Gray shook his head. "Sorry, we don't usually carry anything strong like that when we're teamed with a sentinel."
"Danny, I think you need to look at this," said Chin, holding out the strobe. "Can you hear anything?"
Danny listened, but there was nothing he could identify as coming from the ball. He shook his head.
Chin frowned again, and put the ball to his ear. "I think I can hear a pulse, very high-pitched, almost out of range."
Danny looked at the ball. "The fucker!" The exclamation was half horrified realization and half admiration.
"What?" asked Gray.
"It's a dual-sense strobe. It has to be."
Rosetti looked stunned. "Of course! The light gets the sentinel's attention, and the sound pulse keeps him zoned."
"But I can't hear anything," said Gray.
"It's ultrasonic - probably 20 or 24 kiloHertz. Dog whistle range," Rosetti added, when Gray still looked confused.
"We have to disable it," said Danny. "If McGarrett zoned on the pulse, this will be making it worse."
Gray took it from Chin's hand, dropped it on the floor. Danny and Rosetti both yelled out but it was too late - Gray's foot came down and stamped on it. There was a small spark as the circuit died, but nothing more.
"You idiot!" yelled Danny. "That could have been rigged."
Gray paled when he realized what he'd done. "Did it work?" he asked.
They all looked at Chin, who listened for a moment and then said, "I think it's stopped."
Rosetti got out of the armchair. "I think I'll just have a word with my team member here about safe dismantling of equipment."
Danny held an arm out. "Before you do, I still need smell and taste stimuli. Do you have anything in your packs?"
Rosetti and Gray began to empty their packs. Apparently SEALs on a mission carried a lot of weird but possibly useful stuff, like ammunition, thin climbing rope, duct tape, multi-tools, gun oil, blocks of C4, detonators (thankfully carried in different pockets), small night-vision scopes, more ammunition, and, right at the bottom, some MRE packs, already stripped of the good bits.
Gray proffered the MRE entrée pack. "Chicken with noodles?"
Danny rolled his eyes. "Is there anything about freeze-dried 'chicken with noodles' that indicates 'tasty' to you?"
Gray answered ruefully, "No sir, that's why it's still there and not in my stomach."
Rosetti fared a little better. At the bottom of his pack he had the remains of his own MRE pouch, including the beverage powder, ground pepper and salt. Danny picked them up.
"They'll do for taste, but I don't think they any of them have a strong enough smell."
"There are some flowers outside," Chin volunteered. "Some of them should have scent."
"Good thinking."
A few minutes later Danny edged his way back into the dark room, laying out his props on the floor beside the sofa.
"OK, McGarrett," he murmured. "It looks like you went into a dual zone on hearing and sight, and touch doesn't seem to be working for you so I've scrounged up a few things for smell and taste." He picked up one of the plumeria blossoms and placed it under the man's nose. Was it his imagination, or was there a slight twitch of the nose? He waved the flower gently, releasing more of its rich fragrance into the still room air. Yes, that was a definite twitch, but there was no other sign of response. Smell wasn't going to be enough.
Sighing once more, he opened the packet of beverage powder and stuck his fingertip in, then pulled at McGarrett's lips. His teeth were tightly clenched and Danny didn't fancy losing a finger so he made no attempt to open them, but rubbed the powder inside his bottom lip and then waited. After a few seconds McGarrett's lips moved, and Danny was suddenly reminded of the way his daughter Grace had done the same thing as a baby whenever Danny had touched her mouth. It was a primitive reflex, but right now it was clear that McGarrett was too deeply-zoned for anything more purposeful. Encouraged, Danny repeated the application of beverage powder and watched as the movement was repeated. Good, he was definitely on the right track.
He continued sensory stimulation for the next twenty minutes, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, and moving between touch, smell and taste. Just as he wondered if he was going to have to resort to pepper - which he was definitely keeping as a last resort because no sentinel in the world was going to react well to that, no matter how zoned they were - McGarrett's eyelids started flickering.
"Thank Christ," muttered Danny. He sat back on his heels for a moment, then got up and stretched. He winced as all the joints in his back cracked - it had been a tough day and he hadn't had nearly enough sleep. Once the sentinel was up he was going to try and get out of there fast, so he could try for two hours' sleep before he had to get up again.
"Fuck."
The soft expletive dragged his attention back to the sofa. McGarrett's eyes were open - barely - and he was rubbing his face.
"Hey there," said Danny in a soft voice, knowing from experience that the sentinel would be disoriented and very anxious. "Focus on my voice and dial down to three. Dial sight down to one or two, we're in a dark room."
McGarrett groaned but Danny kept talking, giving the sentinel a steady volume of sound to help him settle his hearing.
"You're safe now. Your friends are just through in the next room. You zoned on a strobe ball - it had an ultrasonic beeper as well as the light, so it was a dual zone."
"Yeah, figured that, about ten seconds too late." McGarrett hauled himself to a sitting position. 'How long?"
"About three hours. Took me a while to bring you out."
"Shit." He sounded disgusted with himself.
"Yeah, well, that's what you get for trying to work without a guide. Do yourself a favor and go home, get some grief counseling and then find a new guide before you go on active duty again."
"No time for that."
Danny shrugged. He could ream the guy out some more; give him the standard lecture on how severe emotional upsets destabilized the senses; point out how fucking stupid he was for thinking he could work through it … but it wasn't his place. He wasn't a guide anymore.
"Where am I?"
"Wai'anae country club."
"Who are you?"
"Detective Danny Williams, Honolulu PD."
"Where's Hesse?"
"No idea. I'll get your friends, they can fill you in on what happened. This really has nothing to do with me."
He stepped into the outer office. "Your sentinel is awake. You'd better bring him up to date and then work out what you're going to do."
"Thanks, detective," said Rosetti.
"No sweat." He turned to Chin. "I'm heading home. Let me know how things work out."
"Sure, Danny." Chin smiled at him. "Thanks for helping out."
"No problem." He turned back to the SEALs. "Make sure he gets himself checked out. He really shouldn't be on a mission after major psychological trauma, even with a guide. Without one he's more of a liability than an asset."
The SEALs exchanged glances. "Commander McGarrett is used to working without a guide," said Rosetti.
Gray added, "He only agreed to take Lieutenant Rollins because the Admiral insisted. When she was killed he said he wasn't going to risk anyone else."
"Whatever. Just get him reviewed. I don't care what he tells you, he is not fit to continue this mission."
"Like hell I'm not."
Danny spun around to see McGarrett at the door, looking like thunder.
"Rosetti, Gray, get your gear together. We need to get back on the trail. Where's Thompson?"
"Shrapnel to the leg. He went back to town with the cops."
McGarrett ran an eye over the two SEALs, taking in the bandage on Rosetti's arm. "You OK?"
"Yes, sir. Just a scratch."
"Good."
Danny felt a rush of anger. "You just came out of a zone. You need to rest and recalibrate. If you go out there now you'll just endanger your life and your team."
"I can recalibrate on the way."
Danny just stared at him. "What part of 'severely traumatized' did you not understand? It's going to take weeks to get over this, and that's assuming you have counseling and no more trauma."
"I can cope."
"No, you can't. You just proved that. If you'd had a guide who'd seen what happened you'd have been out in just a few minutes. Instead your SuperSEAL machismo bullshit has cost you hours. Just be thankful it didn't cost you your life - or your team's.
He wasn't prepared for the stricken look on McGarrett's face, and felt sorry that he'd been so blunt, especially in front of the man's team. But he couldn't bear the thought of this sentinel going out alone, hurting inside, with no one to ground him. It was too dangerous.
"Danny," Chin said softly, reaching out with one hand. "You need to chill, brah. It's not your problem."
Danny took a deep breath. Chin was right. McGarrett was not his sentinel, and he had no jurisdiction over SEALs unless they broke local laws. If McGarrett wanted to go out and do something incredibly stupid, there was nothing he could do about it. "OK, not my problem. I get it." And that felt so wrong. It felt like it was his problem, and it was making him feel incredibly frustrated that he couldn't fix it.
Because he was looking at Chin, Danny didn't see McGarrett's expression change from stricken to analytical, his gaze switching from Danny to Chin and back.
"No," said McGarrett. "No way is he your sentinel."
Danny looked at him, confused. "I never said he was."
McGarrett looked around and then cocked his head slightly, obviously doing an auditory scan of the surrounding area. After a few seconds he looked accusingly at Danny. "Then where is he? Or she?"
"I - I don't have one. She died." He stopped himself from saying anything more.
McGarrett's face closed over in reflected grief. "I'm sorry. How long ago?"
"Three years."
"OK. Then I can requisition you for the duration of the mission."
"What?" Too late, Danny saw the trap he'd fallen into. "No! Absolutely no way."
"You're an unattached guide."
"I'm not a guide anymore. I have a job here, family, responsibilities."
"I have a job to do and I need a guide, you said so yourself."
"So go to the Institute and request interviews with the guides who actually want to bond."
"There's no time for that."
"Not my problem."
McGarrett stuck out his jaw. "A sentinel can demand the help of any unattached guide for a limited duration in an emergency."
"I hate to tell you this, friend, but this is not an emergency. Bomb scares, child abduction, natural disasters - they are emergencies. You wanting to play Tarzan in the middle of the jungle because your target got away from you is not an emergency."
"It is to me."
"Sucks to be you then." He turned to leave and was halfway to the door when he felt the atmosphere in the room change. Without even thinking about it, he dropped, rolled and drew his gun in one fluid motion, coming up with his gun pointed at McGarrett. McGarrett, as expected, was pointing a gun at him, and the other two were just taking aim. Chin, he was pleased to see, already had his own gun pointed at the sentinel.
No one moved for several seconds.
"So," said Danny, "it looks like we have a Mexican stand-off."
"You're coming with us." McGarrett's voice was flat and cold.
"No."
"I can have you arrested for obstruction."
"I can have you arrested for kidnapping."
Chin tried to mediate. "Guys, why don't we all calm down for a second. Let's lower the guns and discuss this like civilized people."
McGarrett ignored him. "You're coming with us," he repeated, his eyes fixed on Danny.
"No." Danny glared back. He was not going to back down on this. He had plans for this weekend, dammit!
"It's a sentinel emergency."
"It's a sentinel tantrum. Stop behaving like a toddler and work with your team."
"I want you on the team."
"Well, you're not getting me."
McGarrett leaned back slightly and looked down his nose. It was quite disconcerting. Then he took out his cell phone and pressed a speed-dial button. "Governor? It's Steve McGarrett here. My apologies for waking you. I'm on the trail of Victor Hesse but he's made a run for the forest. I am requesting that you assign Detective Danny Williams to me as a temporary guide in order to expedite the hunt." He paused, then smiled. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll have the paperwork for you as soon as we get back."
He looked at Danny as he ended the conversation and raised an eyebrow. "Happy now? It's all legal. No kidnapping involved."
Danny exploded. "You are fucking nuts! I am not going on a manhunt in the middle of the night in a tropical rainforest with a bunch of Neanderthals. Chin! You have to help me."
Chin held up his hands. "Sorry brah, but I can't go against the governor."
"Traitor!" Danny hissed.
Chin shrugged.
"But it's not a real emergency!" he wailed.
"You know the regs, Danny. There's no precise definition of an emergency because no one can predict when a sentinel might need help. He's within his rights."
"So you're just going to abandon me to these … these troglodytes!"
"I'm not abandoning you, I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not," said McGarrett. "Sorry, but you're not a tracker. I'm going to have enough trouble with one civilian; I'm not taking two. Besides, I'll need you to act as base coordinator."
"But-"
"No. Hand over your weapons and gear to Williams." He looked critically at Danny, assessing his clothing - dark green fleecy top, black sweat pants and grey trainers. "You'll have to stay close for your own protection. Hesse isn't much of a shot but he's good with improvised explosives. He'll almost certainly have left some booby traps."
Rosetti grunted. "He already did."
Danny took Chin's tac vest and shotgun, holstering his own pistol. It was a tight fit - Danny was considerably broader than Chin - but he got it adjusted as best he could, and Chin gave him a run-down on the various pockets and their contents.
He nodded his understanding and said, "Make sure you tell Matty and Gracie I'll be back as soon as possible."
"I'll do that." Chin fixed his eyes on the sentinel. "Look after him, McGarrett."
McGarrett's face softened slightly as he nodded and said, "I will."
Then Chin walked out, and Danny was left with a trio of SEALs - one of whom was a certifiably insane sentinel - who were about to track a bomb-happy killer into the forest.
How is this my life? he asked himself.
Part 2
Author: Alassenya
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Genre: Adventure, romance, Sentinel & Guide.
Rating: Mature
Word Count: ~25000
Warnings: Violence, swearing, grief, angst (no sex, sorry about that).
Prompt: "Steve is an un-bonded Sentinel who goes on a warpath/feral when his father is killed and he goes hunting Hesse. The Governor authorized a strike force to take him down, but while they're on the chase, Steve ends up kidnapping a Guide [Danny] who he eventually bonds with."
Summary: Danny is a former guide who moved to Hawaii with his daughter after Rachel (his wife and sentinel) died three years previously. Steve is a military sentinel who prefers to work alone. Their worlds collide when Steve's father is murdered and he returns to Hawaii to hunt down the killer.
Author's Note: The story doesn't adhere to the prompt in every particular, but I hope it's close enough. For those who don't know The Sentinel, it was a series that ran from 1996-1999. Sentinels have enhanced senses that allow them to detect things far beyond the normal human limits, but they are vulnerable to spikes (sudden overwhelming sensations) and zones (trances caused by over-concentration). A sentinel's function and control is improved with the aid of a guide.
[Addendum: the extended edition of this story is now available at Dreamwidth and AO3]
Part 1
Danny woke to the shrill tone of his cell phone. He squinted at the clock: 0140. He'd barely been asleep an hour.
"Williams," he managed to grunt.
"Danny, it's Chin, I need your help."
"Why? What happened?"
"You know that murder case I'm working on? The retired cop?"
"Yeah." Danny hadn't known the man himself, but almost everyone else in the department did, and there had been a lot of discussion and speculation about it in the station. The Navy had sent a sentinel over to help track the killer, which Danny had though a bit of an overkill, but then he tended to avoid sentinels and anything to do with them since his bereavement and retirement as a guide. Some memories were just too painful to risk having them brought up in conversation.
"The sentinel that came over went into a zone while they were trying to track the guy they think did it. They can't get him out."
"Where's his guide?"
"He doesn't have one. He's unbonded, he uses temps sometimes, but his last temp got killed a few weeks ago."
"Shit." That was bad. Some sentinels refused to use a guide, which was fine with Danny as long as they didn't bitch about the consequences - zones, spikes, synesthesia and (in Danny's experience) ridiculously bad tempers. An unbonded sentinel in the military was rare, though, since a zone-out could easily be fatal. The guy had to be a real hot-shot to get away with it in uniform.
"Can you come over, Danny? He's so deep he didn't even register us moving him."
"If he's unbonded, his team members should know how to bring him out."
"They've tried. Nothing's working."
Danny rolled over onto his back and groaned. He was tired, he was pissed off and the last thing he wanted to do was get up out of his nice warm bed and drive to wherever Chin was to talk some military idiot out of a zone that he wouldn't have gone into if he'd had the sense to organize a temp guide like he was supposed to. Sentinel + trauma + high-stress situation = unreliable senses. It was Guiding 101, for fuck's sake.
"Danny?" Chin prompted.
Danny groaned again. "All right, I'll do it. Just send me the location."
"We're on the west side, Wai'anae country club. Go straight in the front door, we're using the manager's office."
"Fine, I'll be there when I get there."
He ended the call and got out of bed, pulling on sweat pants and top. He grabbed his gun and badge, and picked up the phone just as it beeped receipt of a message - the GPS coordinates.
* * *
Forty minutes later he pulled up in front of the Wai'anae country club. One office was lit but the rest of the building remained relatively dark. A guy in black tac gear stood inside the door and waved him into to the office, following him in and closing the door. Inside he found Chin perched on the desk with his shotgun cradled in his arm, and another military type sitting in an armchair and looking a bit pale. The one who had followed him leaned up against the door.
Chin looked slightly ruffled but was otherwise unharmed. "Guys, this is Detective Williams. Danny, meet Chief Rosetti and Petty Officer Gray, SEAL Team Ten."
Armchair guy and door guy nodded respectively.
Danny nodded and turned back to Chin. "What happened?"
"I figured Hesse - the killer - would be looking for weapons, so I put the word out. I got a tip that something was going down here, so we came to check it out. We found Hesse talking to Heleka on the golf course."
"Great." They'd figured Heleka as a gun runner a while back, but it had proved very difficult to get any hard evidence on him. He ran a hand through his hair. "Where's Heleka now?"
"Meka and Kono took him back to the station. They'll sweat him for info but he didn't seem to know much - I think Hesse was a new customer to him."
"Who was driving?"
"Meka."
They exchanged an evil grin. If Meka was driving, that meant Kono was in the back with the dealer. Most people underestimated Kono, which she encouraged and used to her advantage. If the dealer tried to escape - or worse, tried to hit on her - he was going to discover that a fragile-looking young woman could pack a vicious punch. It made them wish they could be there when the car arrived at the station.
Chin returned to his story. "There were a couple of shots fired. Heleka was winged and Hesse ran off. The SEALs ran after him but by then the sentinel was already zoned. I did a scout around the green but there was no one else there - if he had a bodyguard there, he must have done a runner. Then the SEALs came back. One of them had a leg injury so he went with Heleka, and I helped these two bring the sentinel here. They couldn't bring him out of the zone so I rang you."
"For which I am sincerely ungrateful," Danny quipped.
"I'll pick up some coco puffs in the morning," Chin offered.
"You'd better." He gave a moment's thought to Grace, who was trying to make him eat more healthily, and then decided that what she didn’t know wouldn't hurt her. "OK, where is he? And what's his name?"
Rosetti nodded at the door leading to an inner office. "Through there. He's on the sofa. We kept it dark."
Danny nodded.
"And his name's McGarrett," said the other. "Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett."
"McGarrett?" Danny frowned. "Isn't that the same as the cop who was killed last week?"
"His son," Chin said, with a sigh.
Danny gaped at him, then exploded. "No, no, no, no, no! I don't fucking believe this!"
The two SEALs looked stunned by Danny's outburst. He jabbed his fingers at them.
"Are you idiots? Seriously? You put a severely traumatized sentinel into the field to track his father's murderer? After he just lost his guide?"
"The admiral said -"
"I don't fucking care what the admiral said. It takes months to get over either one of those losses, and you just send him straight back out on his own? I couldn't write a better recipe for loss of sensory control if I sat down and studied it for a fortnight! Between the zones and the spikes he'll be psychotic when he isn't catatonic. Seriously, you people are Neanderthals. You don't deserve to work with a sentinel."
"We didn't send him," muttered the guy by the door - Gray.
"We just couldn't stop him," added Rosetti.
"Did you actually try?" asked Daniel.
"He was almost feral," said Gray.
"Yeah. Once he knew it was Hesse we just couldn't stop him. Even the admiral suggested he sit this one out but McGarrett wouldn't take no for an answer."
Danny couldn't stop his fists from clenching. "Believe it or not there are ways to control a sentinel gone feral."
"Yeah," said Rosetti, "and most of them involve heavy-duty tranquillizers and four-point restraint. Which means he'd be out of action for days, if not weeks."
"We don't have that much time," added Gray. "And Hesse is a real bad guy. It's not just McGarrett's dad, he's killed a whole bunch of people over the years. If we don't get McGarrett up and functional in the next couple of hours Hesse will be off the island and we'll be back to square one."
"What about your spy-eyes?"
"Hesse headed for the forest, he's under the canopy. We need ground trackers."
Danny glanced at Chin, whose expression was eloquent enough. HPD had a couple of canine units, but it would take hours to get authorization and then they would need something of Hesse's for the dogs to sniff. And with it being autumn, the chance of rain washing away all the scent trail was pretty high.
Rosetti said, "McGarrett can track Hesse like no one else can. We really need him."
Danny sighed. He wanted to leave. He really, really wanted to turn around and walk out of the door and go him and leave them to sort out the mess they'd got themselves into. But that meant leaving a sentinel - a distressed, grieving sentinel - in a prolonged zone-out. He knew from his training and a few incidents with Rachel that the longer a sentinel was left in a zone, the longer it took to get them out, and the more difficult it became.
He could feel himself weakening. He owed this guy nothing. He hadn't been introduced to the man, hadn't spoken to him, hadn't even set eyes on him, and yet … he could feel a pull, a tenuous, fragile link to whoever was in the next room. Whether it was mere sympathy or something more, he couldn't tell, but he couldn't ignore it.
He took a deep breath. "Look, I'll give it a go, but no promises."
Both SEALs relaxed somewhat, and Danny shook his head. They were acting like it was a done deal, which was far from the truth. "OK. What sense did he zone on?"
They both looked at him, blankly.
"Sight, maybe?" said Gray.
"No, I think it was hearing," said Rosetti.
Danny rolled his eyes. "I need more than a 'maybe'. I need to know. What exactly happened out there?"
The two SEALs exchanged looks and then Rosetti said, "McGarrett knows Hesse. Like I said, he's been chasing him for years. He knows him well enough to track him by his heartbeat if we can get close enough. That's what we were trying to do. Detective Kelly said there was a weapons guy over this side of the island who was a likely contact. McGarrett picked up Hesse's voice a mile away and we sent in the drone. Between the two of them we isolated Hesse to one of the greens. We were approaching but didn't have line of sight. Something spooked Hesse -"
"I think he spotted the drone," put in Gray.
"Yeah, could have been that. Anyway, he threw a strobe ball at us and ran."
"Ouch," muttered Danny. Strobe balls were quite effective against sentinels; the flashing light quickly consumed all visual attention. Most sentinels were trained to overcome the impending zone, though, especially military and police ones. "But he's been strobed before, hasn’t he? He's trained with them?"
"Yeah, he's normally good at ignoring it. And this one must have been defective, because it stopped flashing after a few seconds, but he didn't pull out."
Gray added, "At first I thought he was ignoring the strobe and tracking Hesse by sound, so we halted and tried to be quiet. Then we realized it wasn't just concentration, it was a zone, so I stayed with him and the others went after Hesse."
"Bastard," muttered Rosetti. "He led us straight into a booby trap. Thompson was lucky he only caught a bit of the blast."
"Did anyone pick up the strobe ball?" asked Danny.
Gray and Rosetti looked at each other. "No, I don't think so."
"I'd really like to see it."
Rosetti stood. "I'll go. I'm pretty sure I remember where it is."
"Good. I'll get started then."
"Thanks, detective, we really appreciate this," Gray said.
"Don't expect miracles, guys. I haven't guided anyone since my wife died. I don't know if he'll respond to me any more than he did to you, and it could take hours before he's able to control his senses enough to track anyone. And there's every chance that Hesse could double back to the coast road and be on the other side of the island by dawn."
Chin nodded at that. "I've already alerted the police and port authorities. Can you guys do the same on the military side?"
"Sure," they nodded.
Danny left them sorting out details and walked through to the inner office. The room was fairly dark, illuminated only by the light coming in from the door. The stricken sentinel was lying on a sofa, curled up in a fetal position, not moving. Danny left the door ajar and approached him slowly, murmuring reassurances under his breath.
"Sentinel McGarrett, Steve, I'm Danny Williams, from the Honolulu Police Department. Chin called me in to see if I could help you, he knows I used to be a Guide. I know you lost your father a few days ago, and you lost your guide a couple of weeks back. I know that must have been really hard for you. I lost my sentinel three years ago. She was my wife too, so I know how it feels, I know how tempting it is to curl up and escape for a while."
He reached the bed and put out a tentative hand. There was no reaction when he gently patted the man's shoulder, so he started to run his hand up and down the arm, slowly and soothingly, still talking.
"But you can't stay zoned, you know. You're needed. You're chasing someone. They tell me it's important, that this guy killed your father. I get that you lost control when you saw him. I get that you have an overwhelming urge to kill the fucker. But you need to use your brain as well as your senses. You need to come back, out of that zone."
He talked for almost ten minutes, gradually altering the tone of his voice from soothing to 'guide imperative', but there was no response. Damn. It looked like Rosetti had been right and the sentinel had zoned on hearing. Smell was usually next, but he didn't have anything on him. If he'd been home he would have used coffee or mint or some herbs, but he didn't even have so much as a packet of chewing gum on him. He'd showered only a couple of hours ago, using the same organic unscented products he'd used while Rachel was alive, so there was no help there.
He rose and made his way quietly to the outer room. Rosetti had just returned, and Chin was examining the strobe carefully. It was the size of a golf ball, grey and innocuous-looking.
Danny spread his hands in apology. "I'm not getting anywhere with hearing. Do any of you guys have anything that smells or tastes strong? Chewing gum? Breath mints? Candies? Hell, even beef jerky would do."
Gray shook his head. "Sorry, we don't usually carry anything strong like that when we're teamed with a sentinel."
"Danny, I think you need to look at this," said Chin, holding out the strobe. "Can you hear anything?"
Danny listened, but there was nothing he could identify as coming from the ball. He shook his head.
Chin frowned again, and put the ball to his ear. "I think I can hear a pulse, very high-pitched, almost out of range."
Danny looked at the ball. "The fucker!" The exclamation was half horrified realization and half admiration.
"What?" asked Gray.
"It's a dual-sense strobe. It has to be."
Rosetti looked stunned. "Of course! The light gets the sentinel's attention, and the sound pulse keeps him zoned."
"But I can't hear anything," said Gray.
"It's ultrasonic - probably 20 or 24 kiloHertz. Dog whistle range," Rosetti added, when Gray still looked confused.
"We have to disable it," said Danny. "If McGarrett zoned on the pulse, this will be making it worse."
Gray took it from Chin's hand, dropped it on the floor. Danny and Rosetti both yelled out but it was too late - Gray's foot came down and stamped on it. There was a small spark as the circuit died, but nothing more.
"You idiot!" yelled Danny. "That could have been rigged."
Gray paled when he realized what he'd done. "Did it work?" he asked.
They all looked at Chin, who listened for a moment and then said, "I think it's stopped."
Rosetti got out of the armchair. "I think I'll just have a word with my team member here about safe dismantling of equipment."
Danny held an arm out. "Before you do, I still need smell and taste stimuli. Do you have anything in your packs?"
Rosetti and Gray began to empty their packs. Apparently SEALs on a mission carried a lot of weird but possibly useful stuff, like ammunition, thin climbing rope, duct tape, multi-tools, gun oil, blocks of C4, detonators (thankfully carried in different pockets), small night-vision scopes, more ammunition, and, right at the bottom, some MRE packs, already stripped of the good bits.
Gray proffered the MRE entrée pack. "Chicken with noodles?"
Danny rolled his eyes. "Is there anything about freeze-dried 'chicken with noodles' that indicates 'tasty' to you?"
Gray answered ruefully, "No sir, that's why it's still there and not in my stomach."
Rosetti fared a little better. At the bottom of his pack he had the remains of his own MRE pouch, including the beverage powder, ground pepper and salt. Danny picked them up.
"They'll do for taste, but I don't think they any of them have a strong enough smell."
"There are some flowers outside," Chin volunteered. "Some of them should have scent."
"Good thinking."
A few minutes later Danny edged his way back into the dark room, laying out his props on the floor beside the sofa.
"OK, McGarrett," he murmured. "It looks like you went into a dual zone on hearing and sight, and touch doesn't seem to be working for you so I've scrounged up a few things for smell and taste." He picked up one of the plumeria blossoms and placed it under the man's nose. Was it his imagination, or was there a slight twitch of the nose? He waved the flower gently, releasing more of its rich fragrance into the still room air. Yes, that was a definite twitch, but there was no other sign of response. Smell wasn't going to be enough.
Sighing once more, he opened the packet of beverage powder and stuck his fingertip in, then pulled at McGarrett's lips. His teeth were tightly clenched and Danny didn't fancy losing a finger so he made no attempt to open them, but rubbed the powder inside his bottom lip and then waited. After a few seconds McGarrett's lips moved, and Danny was suddenly reminded of the way his daughter Grace had done the same thing as a baby whenever Danny had touched her mouth. It was a primitive reflex, but right now it was clear that McGarrett was too deeply-zoned for anything more purposeful. Encouraged, Danny repeated the application of beverage powder and watched as the movement was repeated. Good, he was definitely on the right track.
He continued sensory stimulation for the next twenty minutes, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, and moving between touch, smell and taste. Just as he wondered if he was going to have to resort to pepper - which he was definitely keeping as a last resort because no sentinel in the world was going to react well to that, no matter how zoned they were - McGarrett's eyelids started flickering.
"Thank Christ," muttered Danny. He sat back on his heels for a moment, then got up and stretched. He winced as all the joints in his back cracked - it had been a tough day and he hadn't had nearly enough sleep. Once the sentinel was up he was going to try and get out of there fast, so he could try for two hours' sleep before he had to get up again.
"Fuck."
The soft expletive dragged his attention back to the sofa. McGarrett's eyes were open - barely - and he was rubbing his face.
"Hey there," said Danny in a soft voice, knowing from experience that the sentinel would be disoriented and very anxious. "Focus on my voice and dial down to three. Dial sight down to one or two, we're in a dark room."
McGarrett groaned but Danny kept talking, giving the sentinel a steady volume of sound to help him settle his hearing.
"You're safe now. Your friends are just through in the next room. You zoned on a strobe ball - it had an ultrasonic beeper as well as the light, so it was a dual zone."
"Yeah, figured that, about ten seconds too late." McGarrett hauled himself to a sitting position. 'How long?"
"About three hours. Took me a while to bring you out."
"Shit." He sounded disgusted with himself.
"Yeah, well, that's what you get for trying to work without a guide. Do yourself a favor and go home, get some grief counseling and then find a new guide before you go on active duty again."
"No time for that."
Danny shrugged. He could ream the guy out some more; give him the standard lecture on how severe emotional upsets destabilized the senses; point out how fucking stupid he was for thinking he could work through it … but it wasn't his place. He wasn't a guide anymore.
"Where am I?"
"Wai'anae country club."
"Who are you?"
"Detective Danny Williams, Honolulu PD."
"Where's Hesse?"
"No idea. I'll get your friends, they can fill you in on what happened. This really has nothing to do with me."
He stepped into the outer office. "Your sentinel is awake. You'd better bring him up to date and then work out what you're going to do."
"Thanks, detective," said Rosetti.
"No sweat." He turned to Chin. "I'm heading home. Let me know how things work out."
"Sure, Danny." Chin smiled at him. "Thanks for helping out."
"No problem." He turned back to the SEALs. "Make sure he gets himself checked out. He really shouldn't be on a mission after major psychological trauma, even with a guide. Without one he's more of a liability than an asset."
The SEALs exchanged glances. "Commander McGarrett is used to working without a guide," said Rosetti.
Gray added, "He only agreed to take Lieutenant Rollins because the Admiral insisted. When she was killed he said he wasn't going to risk anyone else."
"Whatever. Just get him reviewed. I don't care what he tells you, he is not fit to continue this mission."
"Like hell I'm not."
Danny spun around to see McGarrett at the door, looking like thunder.
"Rosetti, Gray, get your gear together. We need to get back on the trail. Where's Thompson?"
"Shrapnel to the leg. He went back to town with the cops."
McGarrett ran an eye over the two SEALs, taking in the bandage on Rosetti's arm. "You OK?"
"Yes, sir. Just a scratch."
"Good."
Danny felt a rush of anger. "You just came out of a zone. You need to rest and recalibrate. If you go out there now you'll just endanger your life and your team."
"I can recalibrate on the way."
Danny just stared at him. "What part of 'severely traumatized' did you not understand? It's going to take weeks to get over this, and that's assuming you have counseling and no more trauma."
"I can cope."
"No, you can't. You just proved that. If you'd had a guide who'd seen what happened you'd have been out in just a few minutes. Instead your SuperSEAL machismo bullshit has cost you hours. Just be thankful it didn't cost you your life - or your team's.
He wasn't prepared for the stricken look on McGarrett's face, and felt sorry that he'd been so blunt, especially in front of the man's team. But he couldn't bear the thought of this sentinel going out alone, hurting inside, with no one to ground him. It was too dangerous.
"Danny," Chin said softly, reaching out with one hand. "You need to chill, brah. It's not your problem."
Danny took a deep breath. Chin was right. McGarrett was not his sentinel, and he had no jurisdiction over SEALs unless they broke local laws. If McGarrett wanted to go out and do something incredibly stupid, there was nothing he could do about it. "OK, not my problem. I get it." And that felt so wrong. It felt like it was his problem, and it was making him feel incredibly frustrated that he couldn't fix it.
Because he was looking at Chin, Danny didn't see McGarrett's expression change from stricken to analytical, his gaze switching from Danny to Chin and back.
"No," said McGarrett. "No way is he your sentinel."
Danny looked at him, confused. "I never said he was."
McGarrett looked around and then cocked his head slightly, obviously doing an auditory scan of the surrounding area. After a few seconds he looked accusingly at Danny. "Then where is he? Or she?"
"I - I don't have one. She died." He stopped himself from saying anything more.
McGarrett's face closed over in reflected grief. "I'm sorry. How long ago?"
"Three years."
"OK. Then I can requisition you for the duration of the mission."
"What?" Too late, Danny saw the trap he'd fallen into. "No! Absolutely no way."
"You're an unattached guide."
"I'm not a guide anymore. I have a job here, family, responsibilities."
"I have a job to do and I need a guide, you said so yourself."
"So go to the Institute and request interviews with the guides who actually want to bond."
"There's no time for that."
"Not my problem."
McGarrett stuck out his jaw. "A sentinel can demand the help of any unattached guide for a limited duration in an emergency."
"I hate to tell you this, friend, but this is not an emergency. Bomb scares, child abduction, natural disasters - they are emergencies. You wanting to play Tarzan in the middle of the jungle because your target got away from you is not an emergency."
"It is to me."
"Sucks to be you then." He turned to leave and was halfway to the door when he felt the atmosphere in the room change. Without even thinking about it, he dropped, rolled and drew his gun in one fluid motion, coming up with his gun pointed at McGarrett. McGarrett, as expected, was pointing a gun at him, and the other two were just taking aim. Chin, he was pleased to see, already had his own gun pointed at the sentinel.
No one moved for several seconds.
"So," said Danny, "it looks like we have a Mexican stand-off."
"You're coming with us." McGarrett's voice was flat and cold.
"No."
"I can have you arrested for obstruction."
"I can have you arrested for kidnapping."
Chin tried to mediate. "Guys, why don't we all calm down for a second. Let's lower the guns and discuss this like civilized people."
McGarrett ignored him. "You're coming with us," he repeated, his eyes fixed on Danny.
"No." Danny glared back. He was not going to back down on this. He had plans for this weekend, dammit!
"It's a sentinel emergency."
"It's a sentinel tantrum. Stop behaving like a toddler and work with your team."
"I want you on the team."
"Well, you're not getting me."
McGarrett leaned back slightly and looked down his nose. It was quite disconcerting. Then he took out his cell phone and pressed a speed-dial button. "Governor? It's Steve McGarrett here. My apologies for waking you. I'm on the trail of Victor Hesse but he's made a run for the forest. I am requesting that you assign Detective Danny Williams to me as a temporary guide in order to expedite the hunt." He paused, then smiled. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll have the paperwork for you as soon as we get back."
He looked at Danny as he ended the conversation and raised an eyebrow. "Happy now? It's all legal. No kidnapping involved."
Danny exploded. "You are fucking nuts! I am not going on a manhunt in the middle of the night in a tropical rainforest with a bunch of Neanderthals. Chin! You have to help me."
Chin held up his hands. "Sorry brah, but I can't go against the governor."
"Traitor!" Danny hissed.
Chin shrugged.
"But it's not a real emergency!" he wailed.
"You know the regs, Danny. There's no precise definition of an emergency because no one can predict when a sentinel might need help. He's within his rights."
"So you're just going to abandon me to these … these troglodytes!"
"I'm not abandoning you, I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not," said McGarrett. "Sorry, but you're not a tracker. I'm going to have enough trouble with one civilian; I'm not taking two. Besides, I'll need you to act as base coordinator."
"But-"
"No. Hand over your weapons and gear to Williams." He looked critically at Danny, assessing his clothing - dark green fleecy top, black sweat pants and grey trainers. "You'll have to stay close for your own protection. Hesse isn't much of a shot but he's good with improvised explosives. He'll almost certainly have left some booby traps."
Rosetti grunted. "He already did."
Danny took Chin's tac vest and shotgun, holstering his own pistol. It was a tight fit - Danny was considerably broader than Chin - but he got it adjusted as best he could, and Chin gave him a run-down on the various pockets and their contents.
He nodded his understanding and said, "Make sure you tell Matty and Gracie I'll be back as soon as possible."
"I'll do that." Chin fixed his eyes on the sentinel. "Look after him, McGarrett."
McGarrett's face softened slightly as he nodded and said, "I will."
Then Chin walked out, and Danny was left with a trio of SEALs - one of whom was a certifiably insane sentinel - who were about to track a bomb-happy killer into the forest.
How is this my life? he asked himself.
Part 2